Reliable, Resilient and Sustainable Development of Offshore Wind Farms
As the global shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy intensifies, offshore wind farms represent a pivotal sustainable solution for energy provision. The rapid expansion of this technology presents both immense opportunities and significant challenges.
35 years of experience
Two significant challenges in offshore wind development are:
• Scale of development: In the next few decades we will see massive construction, life-time extensions, and renewal efforts for offshore wind farms. This is not merely business as usual, but a transformation of energy infrastructure.
• Environmental and operational considerations: It’s crucial to balance economic efficiency, safety, minimisation of CO2 emissions and environmental protection, while ensuring a high level of resilience, reliability and security, with societal expectations and demands.
NIRAS’s experience with offshore wind dates back to when offshore wind first emerged as a sustainable solution with a pioneering project at Vindeby in Denmark in 1991. Here we provided geotechnical advice for the design of the foundations. Since then, we have followed our clients into new and exciting markets internationally and worked with them to realise some of the largest and most complex projects yet delivered. We have lost count of the number of projects we have advised upon on in one capacity or another, but it is certainly more than 50 GW and increasing all the time.
NIRAS’ advanced engineering services
NIRAS is a world leading service provider of offshore structural engineering and addressing the challenges in offshore wind development. Our team is comprised of internationally recognised specialists in engineering and the environment. Working closely together, we advise clients on the identification and evaluation of potential sites and the development of technically and commercially feasible design and integrity management concepts.
NIRAS’ expertise in integrated services for the offshore wind sector:
• We employ a “systems-of-systems” strategy for the design and integrity management of all aspects of offshore wind farms, including foundations, towers, and grid connections.
• We are the leading provider within modelling and analysis capabilities for offshore environmental loads, hydrodynamics and scour.
• We are experts within design, service life extension and integrity management for both fixed and floating offshore wind turbine structures.
• We provide resilience engineering to optimise strategic and operational decisions, focusing on reliability, security, service provision, cost efficiency and sustainability.
• We utilise probabilistic systems modelling, risk and reliability analysis, structural health monitoring, risk-based inspection planning, probabilistic digital twin technology, advanced hydromechanics modelling and big data to enhance project outcomes.
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Collaborative opportunities
NIRAS provide multi-disciplinary environmental and engineering consultancy services to developers, investors and governments looking to realise the potential of offshore wind that are based on our core values. We are happy to offer our services directly or as joint ventures with other consultants and contractors to leverage collective expertise.
“We highly value a close and trusting relationship with our clients, and the solutions we develop are based on our core values: we listen, learn and deliver.“
Contact us
To harness NIRAS’s leading offshore wind farm engineering services, we ensure that our clients projects are not only sustainable, but also resilient and economically viable. Please contact us to explore how our advanced solutions can meet your development needs.
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Thor Ugelvig Petersen Vice President for Offshore Wind
Michael Havbro Faber Expertise Director