Offshore Wind Journal 2nd quarter 2017

2nd Quarter 2017 www.owjonline.com

Journal

IN-SERVICE

EXPERIENCE FEEDS

INTO SOV DESIGN AND OPERATIONS

Zero subsidy bids are a breakthrough for cost competitiveness Geotechnical drillship can outperform a jack-up

“Capacity factors for a fixed windfarm are around 40 per cent. For floaters, capacity factors will exceed 50 per cent, but port infrastructure will be a challenge” R V Ahilan, group director, renewables advisory & energy, LOC Group, see page 23

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contents

2nd Quarter 2017 volume 6 issue 2

38 12

Regulars 5 COMMENT 51 BEST OF THE WEB

Area reports

40

6 Chris Willow, an associate director at BVG Associates, looks at the implications of the latest CFD round in the UK 9 Poland does not have a dedicated subsidy scheme for offshore wind, but a new renewable energy auction law offers hope 12 Germany’s first auction for offshore wind saw the industry’s first ever zero subsidy bids 15 Planned projects on the East Coast of the US suggests that the country is at last on the cusp of commercial scale offshore wind development

Interview 1 6 With the 8 megawatt version of its now well established direct drive unit being tested in Denmark, Siemens Wind Power CEO Michael Hannibal says rating and rotor size are both “still in play”

Turbines 19 The offshore wind market is playing a fast-growing role among turbine OEMs

Turbine manufacturing 20 Siemens Wind Power says the company’s soon to open nacelle building facility in Cuxhaven will take cost out of the turbine manufacturing process

47

Floating offshore wind 23 Floating offshore wind has massive potential but commercial scale projects will need a new approach to infrastructure and logistics

Offshore access/walk-to-work 26 February 2017 saw Kongsberg Maritime confirm the first order for its K-Walk integrated vessel gangway solution

Corrosion control

29 The Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator aims to cut the cost of offshore wind by optimising the design of jacket foundations

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Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

contents Technology

2nd Quarter 2017 volume 6 issue 2

Grid connection

Editor: David Foxwell t: +44 1252 717 898 e: david.foxwell@rivieramm.com

33 An innovation exchange programme launched in the UK will help introduction of ‘disruptive technology’ and accelerate cost reduction

34 The potential benefits of transmission hubs and modular grids for electricity generated from renewables were both in focus in early 2017

Operations & maintenance

Commercial Portfolio Manager: Bill Cochrane t: +44 20 8370 1719 e: bill.cochrane@rivieramm.com

Service operation vessels

Head of Sales – Asia: Kym Tan t: +65 9456 3165 e: kym.tan@rivieramm.com

36 Remote controlled vehicles have much to offer the offshore wind industry

38 Siemens is looking at using SOVs on multiple windfarms

Geotechnical vessels

40 A new geotechnical drilling vessel, Freja, has entered service with a motion compensated drill floor

Innovations

42 Smart manufacturing and expertise from the offshore oil and gas sector has helped Sparrows Group break into the offshore wind industry 43 Palfinger believes its container and pallet handling system can make work on SOVs safer and more efficient

Vessel technology

44 A Norwegian motion monitoring system can enhance vessel safety and reduces risk

Installation vessels

47 Orion, GeoSea’s newly-ordered installation vessel is a monohull, rather than a jack-up

Turbine support vessels

48 With the market for high spec construction vessels at a record low, owners are looking to opportunities elsewhere, in the renewables sector

Profile

Sales, Australasia: Kaara Barbour t: +61 414 436 808 e: kaara.barbour@rivieramm.com Production Manager: Ram Mahbubani t: +44 20 8370 7010 e: ram.mahbubani@rivieramm.com Subscriptions: Sally Church t: +44 20 8370 7018 e: sally.church@rivieramm.com Chairman: John Labdon Managing Director: Steve Labdon Finance Director: Cathy Labdon Operations Director: Graham Harman Head of Content: Edwin Lampert Executive Editor: Paul Gunton Head of Production: Hamish Dickie Business Development Manager: Steve Edwards Published by: Riviera Maritime Media Ltd Mitre House 66 Abbey Road Enfield EN1 2QN UK

52 Tim Cornelius at Atlantis Resources has set his sights on floating offshore wind

Next issue Main features include: area reports: Germany, The Netherlands, Belgium, US; foundations; survey requirements; turbine technology; cost reduction; finance; diving; trenching; scour protection; vessel technology

www.rivieramm.com ISSN 2050-6694 (Print) ISSN 2050-6708 (Online)

Front cover photo: A windfarm technician uses an offshore access system from Uptime to walk-to-work from a service operation vessel to an offshore wind turbine.

©2017 Riviera Maritime Media Ltd

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Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

Disclaimer: Although every effort has been made to ensure that the information in this publication is correct, the Author and Publisher accept no liability to any party for any inaccuracies that may occur. Any third party material included with the publication is supplied in good faith and the Publisher accepts no liability in respect of content. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, reprinted or stored in any electronic medium or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the copyright owner.

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COMMENT | 5

IRISH PLAN IS A CALL TO ACTION FOR RENEWABLES

R David Foxwell, Editor

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ecent weeks have seen Ireland’s minister for communications, climate action and environment launch a public consultation on a draft National Mitigation Plan.

The consultation called for submissions from renewable energy sector stakeholders by 26 April 2017 with a view to reducing Ireland’s greenhouse gas emissions.

In the past, Ireland’s Climate Change Bill was described as “more aspiration than perspiration”, but things have moved on, and the Irish Government is now asking the market to help it plan the reduction of Ireland’s level of greenhouse gas emissions.

The Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act, which was enacted in late 2015, requires the minister for communications, climate action and environment to submit to the government a National Mitigation Plan.

The plan must be submitted by 10 June 2017. In March 2017, the minister launched the statutory public consultation on the plan.

As Eoin Cassidy, a partner at Mason Hayes & Curran noted, the plan is intended as a roadmap for the policy measures that will be employed to manage and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Once implemented, the plan will be subject to a review every five years.

According to the Act, ‘relevant bodies’ such as the Electricity Supply Board, the Commission for Energy Regulation and EirGrid must ‘have regard to’ the plan in the performance of their functions.

The plan has potentially significant ramifications for wind energy and not just onshore wind, in which Ireland has already heavily invested. “The draft plan includes four chapters addressing the electricity generation, built environment, transport and agriculture, and forest and land use sectors.

These chapters provide the relevant sectoral policy context, the greenhouse gas emissions

trends for each sector, the opportunities and challenges, the measures that are currently in place and those that are under consideration,” Mr Cassidy explained.

The draft also recognises wind energy as having been the main driver of growth in Irish renewable electricity generation, although it acknowledges that the installation of a further 880 megawatts of onshore wind is required by 2020 to achieve Ireland’s 2020 target.

Looking forward to the period from 2020 to 2030, the draft plan indicates an intention to diversify the portfolio of renewable electricity generation to include offshore wind, solar, bioenergy and wave and tidal generation.

This is to be welcomed. However, as Mr Cassidy notes, the Irish Government should not lose sight of the critical importance of onshore wind to Ireland’s decarbonisation transition in an achievable and cost-effective manner. Ireland’s success to date of achieving high levels of wind energy integration into the energy mix at a low cost should not be ignored.

The draft plan includes a number of questions to guide responses and submissions – although these are not prescriptive.

Questions relevant to the energy sector include what further contribution should renewable electricity make towards progressing the transition to a low-carbon society and economy and how should this be facilitated and, importantly, what other renewable technologies should be considered in order to diversify the power generation mix.

“It is important that the renewables sector responds robustly,” said Mr Cassidy.

“The submissions provide an opportunity for the renewable energy industry to help set the agenda for policy decisions into the future.”

The low cost of onshore wind is well established. With the cost of offshore wind falling steeply, now is surely the time for Ireland to consider ‘steel on water’ as well as on land. OWJ

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

6 | UK

CHALLENGES – AND OPPORTUNITIES

– LIE BEYOND UK’S NEXT CFD With the new allocation round for the UK’s contract for difference (CFD) scheme upon us, it is timely to think about what is likely to happen and what may be some longer-term implications, as Chris Willow* explains

The latest allocation round sees offshore wind energy up against other ‘less established’ technologies such as anaerobic digestion, dedicated biomass with CHP, wave, tidal stream and geothermal projects

T

he forthcoming allocation round is the second to be held and comes more than two years after the first.

The UK government will be awarding support contracts worth up to £290 million a year (in 2011/12 prices) to projects using so-called ‘less

established technologies’ commissioning in 2021/22 or 2022/23. This includes offshore wind, advanced conversion technologies, anaerobic digestion, dedicated biomass with combined heat and power, wave, tidal stream and geothermal projects. The government has limited the

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

amount of ‘fuelled’ projects that can be supported to 150 megawatts (MW). Onshore wind, energy from waste and solar photovoltaic projects will not be eligible.

Developers were due to submit their applications by mid-April. Then, assuming there are no delays and the

budget is oversubscribed (which is what we expect), the government will hold an auction and developers will submit sealed bids at the end of May, and the winners will be notified by late June.

If there are delays caused by reviews and appeals, this process could be drawn out until the autumn.

From an offshore wind perspective, the main participants are expected to be Dong Energy (Hornsea 2), EDPR (Moray Firth) and innogy and Statkraft (Triton Knoll). No other big projects are expected to be involved, given the government’s requirement for developers to have all the necessary consents in place before they apply.

The big unknown is the strike price the winning developer(s) will need to bid to win. Having seen a string of impressively low results from the Dutch and Danish auctions last year, expectations are that they will need to be extremely competitive.

The UK’s market structure (especially the inclusion of the cost of electrical connection to shore) means the headline prices will not be as low as some of these other results, but industry discussions suggest strike prices in the £80–85 per megawatt hour (MWh) range, with some going even lower.

Considering that the government had set a ceiling strike price of £100–105/ MWh, this kind of result would have a significant impact. For example, using the government’s ceiling price, the £290 million budget could support just over 1 gigawatt (GW ) of capacity. If industry lives up to expectations, however, this could double.

So, if this is the current situation, what are the longterm implications of what is happening? What might the consequences be of another strong CFD result for offshore

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UK | 7

wind? I have suggested some ideas below.

The government’s last statement about its long-term ambition for offshore wind was back in November 2015 when Amber Rudd, then secretary of state for energy and climate change, said it could support “up to 10GW” of new offshore wind projects in the 2020s.

As this statement was made before the stunning Dutch and Danish results of 2016, and even more stunning recent German auction, when expectations of offshore wind costs were less ambitious, the question is how government will react to the new paradigm.

It effectively has three choices: it could stick to its deployment target and take the financial savings; it could stick to the same budget and support additional deployment; or it could do something in between.

With the UK’s nuclear programme facing some major barriers, a strong offshore wind showing in this auction could encourage the government to re-evaluate its plans for the 2020s, particularly if it is significantly below the £92.50/ MWh strike price that EDF secured for Hinkley Point C. My guess is that we will see a measured increase in ambitions up to 14GW of deployment in the 2020s, with some more headroom if costs get even cheaper.

Importantly, the UK will not be alone if it does review its targets: other European countries are already reported to be considering their options, most recently The Netherlands, Belgium and Ireland.

Assuming all goes well in this allocation round, we can say confidently that the offshore wind industry has completed the bumpy transition from the Renewables Obligation scheme to CFDs. Looking ahead, however, there are still many important questions that need to be answered about the government’s delivery

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framework for offshore wind in the 2020s.

For example, the government announced in its Spring Budget this year that it would be replacing the Levy Control Framework, the mechanism used to fund CFDs, but it has not yet given much indication about what will be put in its place.

There is also the question of what other generating technologies offshore wind will be competing against in the future. Looking ahead, it will be difficult to justify its ‘less established’ status beyond 2020, when there may be more than 30GW of capacity deployed globally, and its cost of energy is significantly lower than nuclear.

With the prospect of Brexit looming over everything, getting a clear and robust framework is going to be an industry priority.

A common theme from the recent Dutch and Danish auctions is that competition is a powerful cost-reduction driver.

To beat their rivals, developers have needed to sharpen their pencils and come up with new ways to find savings.

In the Dutch and Danish systems, the process involves all the developers looking at the same site and making a judgement about how costeffectively they can deliver the project. In those systems, prior development of sites is not required, so the entry costs are relatively low.

In contrast, in the UK system, each developer comes with their own site that they will have already spent five or more years and tens of millions of pounds to consent and characterise.

This approach creates great pressure on companies to convert this potential into real projects, but it also creates a high barrier to entry.

Unless developers continue to see the benefit of investing in new sites, there is a risk that there will not be enough competition to drive ongoing

cost reduction. The government can compensate for this by continuing to lower the ceiling strike price, but this is a less effective way of price discovery than the Dutch/Danish model.

Finally, it is important that industry continues to make progress on even more cost reduction, and this is going to require further technology innovation.

The UK is playing a critical role in this process, with work on a number of fullscale, offshore demonstration projects due to start this year.

EDF’s project off Blyth will involve the first multi-unit deployment of next-generation gravity base foundations with 8.3MW turbines; the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre in Aberdeen Bay will see the first multi-unit deployment of jacket foundations with suction buckets and 66kV cabling; and the Hywind Scotland, Kincardine and Dounreay projects will all see the deployment of floating foundation concepts.

The challenge is that these projects are all being deployed

under the soon-to-be-closed Renewables Obligation scheme, and the competitive nature of the CFD auction means that there is now no practical way for stand-alone demonstration projects to secure support contracts.

This problem may be overcome if the developers that secure CFDs commit to deploying innovative technology on some of their units in their supply chain plans. This will require careful policing by the government to ensure developers follow through with such commitments.

This allocation round is going to be important and – we expect – very successful for offshore wind. Once it is done, however, industry and government are not going to have any time to sit back and appreciate the scale of their achievement. Having brought offshore wind into the mainstream, the work starts here. OWJ *Chris Willow is an associate director at BVG Associates in the UK

After the very low prices bid for recent contracts in The Netherlands and Denmark the expectation is that bids will need to be particularly competitive

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

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POLAND | 9

AUCTIONS OFFER OPTIONS

FOR OFFSHORE WIND IN POLAND POLAND DOES NOT HAVE A DEDICATED SUBSIDY SCHEME FOR OFFSHORE WIND BUT NEW RENEWABLE ENERGY AUCTION LAWS OFFER HOPE

I

n 2015, coal was responsible for 87 per cent of Poland’s electricity generation.

The country had no offshore wind energy. In the absence of a dedicated subsidy, offshore wind has struggled to take off in the country. However, there are a number of projects in development, developers with high hopes for the sector, strong support from industry bodies and associations and a possible route to market for new projects.

As Dr Tom Harries, an associate at Bloomberg New Energy Finance explained, Poland’s position in the Baltic means that building in its waters is different to doing so in the North Sea. Less tidal variation, weaker currents and lower salinity levels mean lower installation and maintenance

Poland may not meet 2020 targets, but auctions for offshore wind could jumpstart investment in renewables

costs. Installation costs can also be held down by projects being located closer to land and in shallower waters than the next wave of North Sea projects.

Even so, challenges remain.

Capacity factors are likely to be lower in the Baltic, and complex seabed conditions could pose a challenge to foundation design and installation.

Currently, two utilities are leading the line for Polish offshore wind: Polenergia and PGE hold a project pipeline in the region of 1.2 gigawatts (GW) and 3.4GW, respectively.

By securing environmental permits for the first 600 megawatt (MW) phase of its Baltyk Śtrodkowy offshore windfarm, Polenergia has emerged as the frontrunner.

However, as Dr Harries explained, Polish offshore wind developers face a bigger

hurdle than securing permits.

A dedicated subsidy for the sector remains elusive, and without support, the projects will fail to put steel in the water.

The entry of new renewable energy auction laws might offer hope.

In November 2016, Poland’s Ministry of Energy revealed new laws for a renewable energy auction budget for 2017. The budget highlighted photovoltaic as a priority whilst emphasising that baseload renewables remain key to the government (agricultural biomass and dedicated biomass).

Unfortunately, there was no explicit mention of offshore wind, but hope remains.

The auction is split into different pots, with each pot’s entry requirement covering an emissions cap, a minimum

capacity factor, small or large projects and new or existing projects. Despite not explicitly mentioning offshore wind, the sector could in theory compete in Pot 1 ‘capacity factor higher than 3,504 megawatts per year,’ (MWh/year, which equates to 40 per cent).

To be successful, offshore wind projects will need to fend off stiff competition from biomass, biogas and dedicated co-firing projects. Alternatively, offshore wind could wait and hope that a dedicated offshore wind pot is introduced in future.

“Poland will fail to meet its 500MW target for offshore wind by 2020 (from 2010). However, with projects progressing through the development phase and auctions offering a potential route to market, we could see offshore wind materialise in Poland as early as 2022,” said Dr Harries.

A report published by McKinsey & Company in 2016, Developing offshore wind power in Poland: Outlook and assessment of local economic impact, suggests that developing 6GW of wind

10 | POLAND

power capacity in Poland would require an investment of PLN70 billion (US$17.6 billion). Investment on this scale would enable Poland to build a supply chain within its borders, developing Polish businesses and localising the plants of international companies in the sector in Poland.

The development of offshore wind power through 2030 could generate PLN60 billion (US$15.1 billion) of additional gross domestic product for the country, said McKinsey & Company, and create 77,000 jobs and secure an extra PLN15 billion (US$3.8 billion) in tax revenues for the state budget. This would benefit not only coastal areas but also companies throughout the country thanks to the development of a supply chain within Poland. Offshore wind could help develop and revive the shipbuilding and steel industries in Poland, becoming an engine of economic growth post-2020, when the European Union’s current financial perspective ends. The development of offshore wind power is also an opportunity for Poland to modernise its port infrastructure, with the creation of ports supporting the construction and maintenance of offshore windfarms.

“Taking into account the potential economic benefits, the cost of offshore wind power will, in reality, be much lower for Polish society than traditional indicators imply,” said the authors of the report.

“Moreover, developing the sector could act as a stimulus for developing local innovation potential, as offshore wind power is a technology where innovation is key.

“Realising this potential will involve many challenges.

But a comprehensive strategy for developing offshore wind power, backed up by close cooperation between key stakeholders, could mean that Poland becomes one of the

leaders in offshore wind power in Europe,” said McKinsey & Company’s report.

To realise the full potential of this opportunity, Poland will need to develop an appropriate system of subsidies and draw up a strategy for developing the supply chain within the country’s borders.

There are, of course, other challenges to overcome. The Polish state-owned transmission system operator Polskie Sieci Elektroenergetyczne estimates that, for the energy produced by 6GW of offshore windfarms to be fed into the onshore power grid safely, the grid would have to be modernised and expanded at a cost of around PLN3 billion (US$755 million).

“By developing offshore wind power, the Polish economy could generate a total of PLN60 billion in additional GDP by 2030 (almost half a per cent of 10year GDP at its 2015 level),” said the report, which breaks down the PLN60 billion (US$15.1 billion) as follows: PLN21 billion (US$5.3 billion) in direct impact from investments; PLN22 billion (US$5.5 billion) in indirect impact from new ventures by companies in the offshore wind value chain, made possible by the initial

investment; and PLN17 billion (US$4.3 billion) in induced impact in other sectors of the economy, generated from the income of people working in the offshore wind value chain.

Breaking down the PLN60 billion figure a different way, almost PLN47 billion (US$11.8 billion) would be generated by the entire range of activities related to preparing and implementing investments.

The remaining PLN13 billion (US$3.3 billion) would result from additional exports by companies based in Poland operating in the offshore wind value chain, from operations and maintenance for offshore windfarms and from investments in onshore electricity assets.

McKinsey & Company believes that additional tax revenues would mainly come from VAT and corporation tax arising from transactions and activity by enterprises with value chains located in Poland.

In addition, almost PLN2 billion (US$504 million) could flow into state coffers from personal income tax and licence fees.

As highlighted above, McKinsey believes that developing offshore wind could also usher in a renaissance in the shipbuilding

Offshore energy alliance meets The first meeting of the Polish Offshore Energy Industry Alliance took place in late February 2017 in Warsaw.

The alliance aims to promote offshore wind energy as a source of green energy and opportunity for the development of Polish industry.

Among the members of the alliance are Polish companies in the maritime, steel and electrical industries representing, among others, shipbuilding, metallurgy

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

and cable design.

In January 2017, the alliance submitted a letter to Poland’s deputy prime minister and minister for development Mateusz Morawiecki in which the signatories called for a government programme aiming at long-term development of offshore wind energy in Poland and the adoption by the government of a goal of 6GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030.

sector. Poland has a long history of building vessels of all types, and Polish yards could potentially build the ships required to install and operate offshore windfarms, as well as key elements of the windfarms, including the towers, turbines and foundations. Another less obvious benefit arising from the development of offshore wind power in Poland would be the impact on heavy industry and mining. The two main raw materials used for the construction of offshore windfarms are steel (primarily for towers and foundations) and copper (for inter-array and export cables).

Assuming a working life of around 20 years, McKinsey & Company’s analysis suggests that servicing, monitoring and repairing offshore windfarms in Poland with a total capacity of 6GW could create work for more than 1,200 people. A further 1,000 jobs could be created in the industries supporting offshore windfarms, such as port services, transportation and servicing ships.

“Development of offshore windfarms in Poland through 2030 could become the biggest driver of demand for steel in Poland in recent years,” said McKinsey & Company. “It could boost demand for products from many Polish steelworks, especially Huta Częstochowa, which in the past produced steel sheet (for ships) with roughly the same specifications as required for the production of towers for offshore wind turbines. This increase in demand could revive the steel industry in Częstochowa, where it previously formed the basis of the local economy. Almost 30,000 tonnes of copper coils, worth PLN0.5–1 billion, would be needed through 2030 for cables for building offshore windfarms with a total capacity of 6GW.” OWJ

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12 | GERMANY

SUBSIDY-FREE BIDS PROVE BENEFITS OF COST REDUCTION AND AUCTION APPROACH Germany’s electricity grid regulator, the Bundesnetzagentur or BNetzA, has approved bids to build what will be the first offshore windfarms anywhere that will be developed without subsidies

T

he cost of offshore wind energy has been falling steeply, as recent rounds of tenders in Denmark and The Netherlands have demonstrated, but the deals awarded by the BNetzA to EnBW and Dong Energy were remarkable.

The bids were “far below expectations,” said BNetzA president Jochen Homann. They are well below the market price for power in Germany, which has fallen 3.8 per cent this year to €30.10 per megawatt hour (MWh), according to broker data compiled by Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF).

What this means is that EnBW and Dong Energy believe they can sell the electricity they generate from the offshore windfarms at a profit, without government support.

“This is a big warning shot across the bows for other renewables,” David Hostert, a wind energy analyst at BNEF, told Bloomberg. “Three of the four winning bids are practically merchant risk projects that will rely on the wholesale power market.” The zero subsidy bids also demonstrate the key role that auctions are playing in driving down the cost of offshore wind energy.

In what was Germany’s first competitive auction for offshore wind, EnBW secured

Frank Mastiaux: “offshore technology has made a quantum leap in terms of efficiency to qualify as a driver of the German Energiewende”

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

approval for the 900 megawatt (MW) He Dreiht offshore windfarm with a bid price that reflects the market rate and did not therefore include a feed-in tariff. For its part, Dong Energy has been approved to build the remaining 590MW of capacity in the first auction, which was sufficient for the Borkum Riffgrund West 2, OWP West and Gode Wind 3 windfarms, the first two of which were also secured with zero subsidies.

Describing the award of the power purchase agreements, EnBW’s CEO Frank Mastiaux said: “Offshore technology has made a quantum leap in terms of efficiency to qualify as a driver of the German Energiewende. We are extremely pleased with this result. EnBW is already one of the leading developers and operators of offshore windfarms in Germany. We already operate two offshore windfarms with a capacity of around 336MW and plan to realise two further windfarms with around 610MW of generating capacity by 2019.

“As announced at our press conference for our annual report in March, we will push forward the expansion of renewable energy as as a strategic focus of our company in the period beyond 2020.

We have laid the foundations for sustainable growth in the

period beyond 2020 by gaining approval for He Dreiht.

“Our bid demonstrates that integrating offshore technology into the market by the middle of the next decade is possible and that offshore wind energy can make a significant contribution towards Germany meeting its energy and climate policy targets.

He Dreiht thus demonstrates our clear commitment to the further responsible and costefficient expansion of offshore wind energy and symbolises our contribution to the Energiewende,” he said.

The auction process saw various projects of differing sizes, which will be connected to the grid in the period 2021 to 2025, competing against each other.

He Dreiht is due to be connected up to the grid in 2025. The time scale for the project thus enabled EnBW to take into account in its bid expected technological developments over the next few years.

As highlighted above, two of the three contracts to build offshore windfarms awarded to Dong Energy will also see windfarms built without subsidies. Dong Energy submitted bids for six projects and won with the following three projects, which have a total capacity of 590MW: OWP West (240MW); Borkum Riffgrund West 2

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GERMANY | 13

(240MW); Gode Wind 3 (110MW). The three projects are due to be commissioned in 2024, subject to a final investment decision (FID) by Dong Energy in 2021.

Samuel Leupold, executive vice president and CEO of wind power at Dong Energy, said: “We are pleased with being awarded three projects in the first of two German auction rounds, and we have good opportunities to add further capacity to our winning projects in next year’s auction.

Today’s results contribute to our ambition of driving profitable growth by adding approximately 5 gigawatts (GW) of additional capacity by 2025.” The Gode Wind 3 project was awarded based on a bid price of €60 per megawatt hour (MWh).

Mr Leupold said: “The zero subsidy bid is a breakthrough for the cost competitiveness of offshore wind, and it demonstrates the technology’s massive global growth potential as a cornerstone in the economically viable shift togreen energy systems.

Cheaper clean energy will benefit governments and consumers – and not least help meet the Paris COP21 targets to fight climate change.

“It is important to note that the zero subsidy bids were enabled by a number of circumstances in this auction.

Most notably, the realisation window has been extended to 2024. This allows developers to apply the next-generation turbine technology, which will support a major reduction in costs. Also, the bid reflects the fact that grid connection is not included.”

Mr Leupold continued, “Financial discipline is key to us. We are of course reflecting the project’s exposure to market risk in the cost of capital applied. We see a solid value creation potential in this German project portfolio and will now begin to further

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mature the projects towards a final investment decision (FID) in 2021.”

Volker Malmen, country manager for Dong Energy in Germany, said, “Offshore wind is fully capable of replacing retiring power plants and becoming the backbone of Germany’s energy transition. I hope that today’s encouraging results will inspire an accelerated and higher volume build-out of offshore wind in Germany and motivate the electrification of transportation and heating.”

Dong Energy will be responsible for the turbines, array cables and offshore substation, while grid operator TenneT will be responsible for construction, operation and ownership of the onshore substation and the export cable.

Explaining its ability to make zero subsidy bids for the power purchase agreements, Dong Energy said there were a number of cost drivers enabling the process. The first was that, by the time the projects are actually built, significantly larger turbines – probably in the 13–15MW range – will be on the market.

“With larger turbines, the developer can increase electricity production while at the same time reduce the number of turbine positions.

This contributes significantly to cost reduction during construction (fewer towers and array cables and lower costs for installation vessels and manpower) as well as during a lifetime of operations and maintenance,” the company said.

The next cost-reduction opportunity is a result of scale: OWP West and Borkum Riffgrund West 2 that Dong Energy successfully bid for will be combined into one large-scale project with the option of adding additional volume in next year’s auction to further increase the total size of the project.

The third is location – the

Samuel Leupold: “zero subsidy bid is a breakthrough for the cost competitiveness of offshore wind”

projects benefit from average wind speeds of more than 10 m/s, which is among the highest wind speeds measured across Dong Energy’s portfolio of windfarms. The projects are also located next to Dong Energy’s Borkum Riffgrund 1 and 2 offshore windfarms, which means that operations and maintenance can be carried out from its existing O&M hub in Norddeich.

The fourth cost benefit is extended lifetime – the German authorities have approved a possible extension to the operational lifetime of the assets from 25 to 30 years. And the last is that, as already highlighted, developers were not bidding for the grid connection in the German auction, which means that grid connection is not included in the bid price.

“The above drivers deliver a cost of electricity below our forecast wholesale power price and will allow us to create value and meet our return requirements at the expected market prices without subsidies. Compared to German power price forecasts available from leading research firms, we consider our price forecast to be relatively conservative,” said Dong Energy. “We have applied a higher cost of capital than in previous projects to reflect the potential increase in market price exposure. The cost reductions required for a German project without subsidies are fully feasible, both technically and commercially.”

Dong Energy said it would monitor the key factors that will determine long-term power prices in Germany with a view to a FID in 2021. These factors include the impact of EU action to reinvigorate the European carbon trading scheme, the phase-out of conventional and nuclear capacity, the future role of coal in Europe and the build-out of onshore transmission grids. OWJ

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

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US | 15

US ON THE CUSP OF COMMERCIAL SCALE OFFSHORE WIND DEVELOPMENT THE ATLANTIC COAST OF THE US IS EXPECTED TO SEE THE COUNTRY’S FIRST COMMERCIAL-SCALE OFFSHORE WIND DEVELOPMENT EFFORTS, WITH SEVERAL STATES PLANNING PROJECTS

RIGHT: MHI Vestas Offshore Wind’s Tetsushi Mizuno believes the New England coastline could become a game-changer for energy generation and provide opportunities aplenty for its turbines

M

HI Vestas Offshore Wind’s co-chief executive Tetsushi Mizuno had some interesting things to say about the US offshore wind market in an opinion piece he wrote for Forbes magazine recently. He noted that the US power grid will continue to be a combination of fossil fuels and renewables and that offshore windfarms have been generating power in Europe since the early 1990s but have only recently taken root in the US with the launch of a project near Block Island, Massachusetts, in 2016, with more planned off the east and west coasts.

“As the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, Vestas already has a significant footprint in the onshore wind market in the US,” he said. “We hope that, within a couple of years, we will see offshore wind projects come to fruition in the US with MHI Vestas turbines as the preferred technology.

“While China leads all nations in total wind capacity, Denmark rules on a per capita basis, followed by Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Germany and Ireland. Wind is growing, in part, because it now has the same level of robustness as a traditional power plant.

Additionally, offshore wind power provides ownership to energy resources for countries that don’t have access to conventional energy. Compared to onshore wind, offshore tends to be more stable, consistent and predictable.”

As he noted, in the latest round of European auctions, the cost of offshore wind dropped precipitously, partly as a result of clear volume targets and economies of scale across the supply chain. “With the right policy and support, the US can significantly reduce the time it takes to reach these goals,” said Mr Mizuno.

“Opponents typically use cost as their main argument against wind, but the fact remains that the numbers are being reduced – drastically. Achieving economies of scale and communicating those achievements is very important for the industry.

“The New England coastline could very well become a game-changer for energy generation. We are predicting initial movement in America coming in Massachusetts, with 400 megawatts (MW) being developed this year alone, with New York as another growth area. Regionally, there is significant untapped

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potential stretching from Maine to Maryland.”

“For offshore wind to succeed in the US, there needs to be bipartisan support and the necessary support structures in place for the market to develop properly,” he concluded. “The future of energy may just depend upon it.”

Recent weeks have seen a number of important developments on the east and west coasts of the US, with Avangrid Renewables, an Iberdrola company, winning the 1.5 gigawatt (GW) Kitty Hawk offshore wind lease auction off the coast of Carolina, a lease for which other European-led industry companies such as Statoil, Wind Future and WPD Offshore Alpha also competed.US secretary of the interior Ryan Zinke and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) acting director Walter Cruickshank said the wind energy area of 122,405 acres (49,500 hectares) offshore Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, was won by Avangrid with a bid of approximately US$9.06 million.

“The success of this lease sale reflects the continued interest of coastal communities to develop their offshore energy resources,” said secretary Zinke. “Renewable energy, like offshore wind, is one tool in the ‘all of the above’ energy toolbox that will help power America with domestic energy, securing energy independence and bolstering the economy. This is a big win for collaborative efforts with state, local and private sector partners.”

BOEM has been working with the North Carolina Renewable Energy Task Force since 2010 to identify an area of sufficient size for offshore wind development. Using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s estimates of 3MW per square kilometre, the lease area has a potential generating capacity of 1,486MW. The actual size of the wind energy project will be determined by the developer.

BOEM also recently held a ‘listening session’ to help inform future efforts relating to the next round of Atlantic offshore wind planning and leasing. During the meeting, BOEM personnel provided an overview of a preliminary framework to help determine where future renewable energy leasing areas may be considered on the Atlantic outer continental shelf. A similar meeting took place in California in April to share information on planning activity for possible offshore wind development along the coast of the state. OWJ

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

16 | INTERVIEW

Direct drive potential far from exhausted says Hannibal With the 8 megawatt version of its now well established direct drive unit being tested in Denmark, Siemens Wind Power CEO Michael Hannibal says rating and rotor size are both “still in play” in new, even more powerful versions of the turbine

W

ith offshore wind turbines growing in size all the time, and with its close competitor MHI Vestas Offshore Wind already touting a 9 megawatt (MW) unit, Siemens Wind Power has hinted in the past that a new, even larger turbine is in the works, although not perhaps in the short term. In the near term, it seems, whilst a new platform is developed, the existing direct drive concept still has much to offer.

As of early this year, the latest version of Siemens’ direct drive wind turbine was in operation at Denmark’s national test centre in Østerild, Denmark. The SWT-8.0-154 is rated at 8MW. It was certified

by DNV GL in January and installed on a tower at a hub height of 120m. The prototype of the SWT-8.0-154 will be used for mechanical and electrical testing, with a final type certificate expected in 2018.

Siemens has embarked on the final development phase for the turbine – which provides up to 10 per cent higher annual energy production under offshore conditions than the company’s well known 7MW model – but Mr Hannibal suggests that 8MW is far from being the end of the line for the existing direct drive platform.

The upgrade to 8MW

Siemens’ direct drive offshore turbine is now capable of 8MW, but that is not the end of the line for the platform

enables a rated power increase of more than 14 per cent from 7.0MW to 8.0MW. Similar to the previous upgrade from 6.0MW to 7.0MW, the 8MW turbine will benefit from an established supply chain and proven direct drive technology. “Since the higher rating will be achieved with only a few component upgrades, including a new cooling concept and a new control system, customers will benefit from key drivers including fast time to market and low risk,” said Siemens.

“Evolution based on our platform strategy demonstrates that innovation to lower the cost of wind energy can work without compromising the proven reliability of a technically mature product,” said Mr Hannibal. “We will continue with our evolution of the platform. The rotor

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

diameter has grown, and rotor size and rating are still in play, even now we have reached 8MW. We can go higher than 8MW.” The direct drive unit first saw light of day as a 6MW unit with a rotor diameter of 120m.

It has twice been upgraded, with a rotor diameter that now stands at 154m.

In addition to new cooling and the new control system, the upgrade of the direct drive wind turbine to 8MW was made possible through the introduction of new magnet technology that exceeds the performance of the technology in the SWT-7.0-154. The company notes that, just as the upgrade from 6.0MW to 7.0MW benefited from an established supply chain and proven components, so too does the upgrade from 7.0MW to 8.0MW. The components

in question include the B75 blade and the medium voltage transformer of the SWT-8.0-154.

“We are relentlessly working on lowering the levelised cost of energy, and the offshore direct drive platform enables us to do this with the lowest possible risk,” said Mr Hannibal.

Speaking to OWJ shortly before the European Commission unconditionally approved the acquisition of Gamesa – and its stake in offshore wind turbine company Adwen – Mr Hannibal declined to comment on plans for Adwen’s AD 8-180 platform.

The investigation by the Commission confirmed that Adwen “was not a competitive constraint on Siemens” and that it was “unlikely that the transaction will appreciably change the competitive situation.” OWJ

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TURBINES | 19

OFFSHORE MARKET

PLAYING GROWING ROLE AMONG TURBINE OEMS THE MOMENTUM PROPELLING CHINESE TURBINE OEMS UP THE LEAGUE TABLE OF TURBINE PRODUCERS SLOWED IN 2016, WITH VESTAS IN TOP POSITION, AND ONCE AGAIN SHOWS THE GROWING IMPORTANCE OF THE OFFSHORE WIND MARKET TO LEADING MANUFACTURERS

C

onsulting firm MAKE’s Global Wind Turbine OEM 2016 Market Share report says Vestas added 8.7 gigawatts (GW) of capacity across 36 markets in 2016, distancing itself from the runner-up, GE, by nearly three percentage points, this being the largest difference between the top two spots in the ranking since 2013.

Western turbine OEMs accounted for four of the top five positions and seven positions overall in the top 15 global rankings. Outside China, western turbine OEMs capitalised on markets with big years for new capacity, including the US, India, and Germany.

As MAKE highlighted, key differentiators for western turbine OEMs included market diversification and commercialisation of larger turbine models.

Larger and larger turbines are, of course, a growing part of the offshore wind industry, and the offshore sector remained an important differentiator, particularly for Siemens, although it did not have the same overall impact as in 2015. However, Siemens still accounted for 68 per cent of global offshore capacity, and Sewind’s offshore achievements in China helped bolster the Chinese OEM’s position in the regional rankings.

Vestas led all turbine OEMs in terms of geographic diversity, with significant capacity added in each region. The top seven western turbine OEMs added capacity in an average of 21 markets in 2016, compared to an average of two markets apiece for Chinese turbine OEMs. MAKE says a lack of geographic diversity continues to expose Chinese turbine OEMs to fluctuations in the size of annual capacity additions in the China market. As a result of less new capacity installed in China year on year, the seven Chinese turbine OEMs in the top 15 global ranking added nearly 500 megawatts (MW) less capacity in 2016 than in 2015. This kept six of the seven Chinese turbine OEMs from maintaining the same position or caused them to fall in the ranking year on year. CSIC Haizhuang was the only Chinese turbine OEM to improve its position and the only Chinese OEM to record more annual capacity in 2016 than in 2015.

Vestas claimed the top spot in the global ranking for the second year in succession, adding capacity in 36 markets in 2016, 13 markets more than any other turbine OEM. Vestas captured the top spot exclusively with onshore growth.

GE returned to the second position globally after losing the spot to Goldwind last year. It held on to the top spot in the US, albeit by a thin margin, and continued to control the Brazilian market. In

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addition to winning the Americas region, GE posted record years in Germany and India and otherwise capitalised on demand for its 2MW platform. It installed the first offshore turbines in the Americas market to complement its onshore focus.

Goldwind fell to the third position globally, with 7 per cent less new capacity year on year, but had a tremendous year in China relative to its compatriots. It outpaced the next closest OEM in China by more than 4.5GW, as no other Chinese turbine OEM installed more than 2GW in 2016 compared to 6.4GW for Goldwind.

Gamesa jumped one position in 2016, beating its new associate, Siemens, for the fourth position in the global rankings. Siemens fell to the fifth spot globally in 2016, as it installed less new capacity onshore and offshore compared to 2015. Although it dominated the offshore sector, namely in Germany and The Netherlands, it added 30 per cent less capacity onshore in 2016 than in 2015. OWJ

MAKE says Siemens, an example of whose turbine is shown here, accounted for 68 per cent of global offshore capacity in 2016

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

20 | TURBINE MANUFACTURING

NACELLE BUILDING FACILITY SET TO FURTHER CUT SIEMENS’ COSTS SIEMENS WIND POWER CEO MICHAEL HANNIBAL SAYS THE COMPANY’S SOON-TO-OPEN NACELLE MANUFACTURING FACILITY IN CUXHAVEN WILL TAKE COST OUT OF THE TURBINEMANUFACTURING PROCESS, BENEFITING THE COMPANY AND THE INDUSTRY AS A WHOLE

D

ue to enter operation this summer, Siemens’ nacelle assembly facility is the latest in a number of investments that the turbine builder has made in offshore wind that also include its new blade manufacturing facility in the northeast of England. The purpose-designed and built nacelle manufacturing facility is next to open, and is the next stage in Siemens’ ongoing effort to drive cost out of the process of manufacturing turbines.

Speaking to OWJ in early March, Mr Hannibal described the Cuxhaven facility as the latest example of a kind of investment that will help Siemens – and the industry as a whole – continue to reduce the cost of wind energy. The latest stage in the transition to series production of new-generation offshore wind turbines requires flexible, lean manufacturing and a fully industrialised approach, said Mr Hannibal, and a relentless focus on cost and on the widespread adoption of modularisation.

“We are working all the time on cost strategy targets,” he told OWJ. “We have steadily reduced production costs year by year. The whole industry is engaged in a massive costreduction effort, whether you are talking about developers or operations and maintenance.

It is equally important that, as an OEM, we take waste out of the industry and reduce overall costs in the process.”

In the past, Siemens has talked about learning from the automotive industry, in which

the process of building a car has been optimised to ensure that they can be manufactured as inexpensively as possible. Much of this success can be attributed to platform strategies, modularisation, standardisation and lean manufacturing processes. Modularisation is equally applicable to turbines, Siemens believes, including modules such as hydraulics and power electronics systems.

With increased use of modularisation comes lower procurement and warehousing costs, so a similar approach to the automotive industry is being adopted at Cuxhaven.

Nacelle manufacturing accounts

Michael Hannibal: “newgeneration offshore wind turbines require flexible, lean manufacturing and a fully industrialised approach”

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

for around 60 per cent of turbine manufacturing costs, the remainder being towers and rotor blades, so the cost savings should be significant.

The nacelle facility at Cuxhaven is designed around production of Siemens’ well known D7 direct drive offshore wind turbines, the latest of which, an 8 megawatt (MW) unit, recently started testing at Denmark’s national test centre in Østerild. Taking nacelle building to a new level will, said Mr Hannibal, “reduce the footprint” for the turbinemanufacturing process. By mid-2017, final assembly of generators, hubs and nacelle back-ends will start to ramp up.

In due course, Cuxhaven will become the ‘hub’ for nacelles for Siemens’ offerings in the wind industry, at which the company will concentrate manufacturing of this particular part of a turbine.

“We have three facilities building nacelles for direct drive offshore wind turbines,” Mr Hannibal told OWJ. “In the future, we will have one purpose-built facility doing what three were doing.”

Offshore turbines are getting bigger and bigger, he notes, and to build, store and then transport them cost effectively, ever greater focus is required on how that it is achieved.

The new production facility is located in the harbour at Cuxhaven, enhancing the logistics involved in building and moving the massive offshore units Siemens currently produces. The location allows heavy components to be loaded directly on to vessels, avoiding the need for expensive

ground transportation. “Apart from being purpose built for the nacelles for our offshore turbines, it will have a number of benefits that will also make the way we work more efficient and cost-effective,” Mr Hannibal explained, noting that the facility at Cuxhaven will be serviced by two specially built roll-on, roll-off vessels.

“Logistically, it will be much more cost-effective than the way we have worked until now,” he said.

Rotra Vente, the first of the pair of vessels, was commissioned recently, having been designed to cost-effectively transport the nacelles used in Siemens’ large, direct drive turbines. The 141m vessel can carry multiple 8MW nacelles and will connect Siemens’ manufacturing site at Cuxhaven with harbours in the North Sea and Baltic. It has been fitted with a large bow door that allows roro access to the cargo deck, which is covered by a telescopic roof to protect the nacelles from seawater spray.

The roof can be opened to allow cargo to be loaded via cranes at harbours without a roro ramp.

The vessel can also transport up to nine wind tower sections per trip or three to four rotor blade sets.

“With Rotra Vente, we are stepping into a new era of cost-efficient offshore wind logistics,” said Mr Hannibal.

“When our new factories in Hull and Cuxhaven are fully operational and both roro vessels are in service, we expect savings of 15–20 per cent in our logistics costs compared to current transport procedures.” OWJ

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Image courtesy of Acta Marine

AP OWJ-0216-130x190:AP OWJ-0216-130x190 08/02/16 15:13 Page1

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FLOATING OFFSHORE WIND | 23

Floaters’ massive potential will need new approach to infrastructure and logistics

F

loating offshore windfarms have come to be seen as the ‘next wave’ in the development of offshore wind energy. Several demonstration projects, a number of which are highlighted below, are getting underway, but despite the many potential advantages of floaters, there remain numerous challenges to overcome.

Speaking to OWJ in early April, R V Ahilan, LOC Group’s director, renewables advisory & energy, said he foresees “dramatic” potential for floating offshore windfarms – potentially hundreds or even thousands of gigawatts (GW) of capacity in countries as diverse as the US and Japan and in countries in the Mediterranean where the water depth excludes fixed foundations.

However, he says the industry will need to adopt a new approach to infrastructure and logistics if large-scale floating offshore wind is to become a reality.

“Floating offshore wind opens up vast areas for potential development,” he said, “areas in which the wind resource available is much cleaner and more reliable than near-to-shore bottom-fixed windfarms.” They present an opportunity to operate a new generation of much larger, high-capacity turbines in a ‘sweet spot’ where capacity factors are much higher than bottom-fixed turbines and there is less shielding of turbines by other units in an array.

“Capacity factors for a fixed windfarm are in the order of 40 per cent,” he explained. “For floaters, capacity factors will exceed 50 per cent, but one of the big challenges is going to be port infrastructure that can handle floating foundations, which will be much larger than those for bottom-fixed units that the industry has grown used to handling. The footprint of a floating foundation could easily be five to six times that of a fixed unit. How many ports can handle units that size? How many have sufficient craneage?”

In contrast to the potential challenges of building and floating out massive floating foundations, maintaining them at sea ought to be easier, he says. Ships stationed offshore or fixed structures

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Floating offshore wind has “massive” potential, says an expert in offshore structures at LOC Group, but the logistics of building floating windfarms will be very different from that required for bottom-fixed units

BELOW: Floating offshore wind opens up vast areas for development where the wind resource is ‘cleaner’ and capacity factor higher

could accommodate turbine technicians.

But mooring such large units will also be a challenge. The offshore oil and gas industry has experience of mooring large structures but not of mooring dozens of them in close proximity. In a 500 megawatt (MW) windfarm, there will be potential interference between moorings. At the same time, he suggests, it might be possible for floaters to ‘share’ moorings.

“Electrical array cables are another area where a lot of research and development will be required,” said Mr Ahilan. “The industry has had great success getting a cable from a fixed foundation to an array and bringing electricity ashore, but new solutions will be required to reliably connect floating units to an array.”

Overall, he says, the industry needs to begin thinking now about how assembly lines for floating foundations might be established, where they might be built and how they will be handled.

Against this background, demonstration projects are moving ahead, among them one led by Irish renewable energy group Gaelectric, which has partnered with floating offshore

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

24 | FLOATING OFFSHORE WIND

wind specialist Ideol to develop floating offshore wind energy projects in Irish waters using Ideol’s patented ‘Damping Pool’ technology.

Gaelectric and Ideol are investigating several sites in Irish waters for short-term precommercial and long-term commercial scale projects, with an initial objective to develop a 30MW plus turbine array project, followed by a multigigawatt commercialscale extension on both Irish coasts.

Ideol’s Damping Pool concept is at the heart of multiple demonstration and precommercial floating offshore wind projects in France and Japan, including the Floatgen project currently under construction off the Atlantic coast of France near Saint-Nazaire. Gaelectric is one of Ireland’s leading renewable energy and energy storage groups.

Gaelectric founding shareholder Brendan McGrath said: “In Ireland, we are blessed with significant reserves of wind energy, which are having very tangible impacts in driving energy prices down and improving the sustainability of electricity generation.

“The development of onshore wind projects is well understood. However, the potential for offshore generation is enormous and holds the prospect of significant benefits for Ireland. Offshore wind speeds are faster and more consistent. We should also be able to deploy larger turbines with the prospect of moving up to 10MW turbines from the onshore levels, which are currently in the region of 2-3MW.” The Irish Government’s Offshore Renewable Energy Development Plan has identified a potential for the generation of 27GW from floating offshore wind in Irish coastal waters. Gaelectric says Ideol’s floating foundation technology “opens up the prospect of creating an enduring, sustainable indigenous industry along the west coast and provides Ireland with the opportunity to rebalance available job opportunities while creating a significant energy hub in western towns and ports”.

A fully commercial-scale offshore project of 500MW capacity based on Ideol’s technology has the potential to create up to 2,500 construction jobs with a further 200 in maintenance.

Earlier this year, the Dounreay Trì floating offshore wind demonstration project off the Scottish coast was granted planning approval by Scotland’s minister for business, innovation and energy, Paul Wheelhouse. The two-turbine

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

demonstration project will be located approximately 6km off the Caithness coastline. Approval came after the recent approval of the Kincardine floating offshore windfarm and last year’s consent of the Hywind Scotland pilot, which means Scotland has now agreed planning permission for up to 92MW of floating offshore wind.

Mr Wheelhouse said “Once operational, the demonstrator project will help to develop this pioneering technology and cement Scotland’s reputation at the forefront of innovation in the renewables sector. This not only highlights our commitment to exploring this innovative technology but offers real scope for the development of wind energy projects in deeper water, in Scotland and across the world.”

Responding to the news about Hexicon’s project, Lindsay Roberts, senior policy manager at Scottish Renewables, said: “Hexicon’s Dounreay Trì is another ground-breaking project for Scotland’s renewable energy sector and shows how our natural resources and skilled supply chain are proving attractive to businesses from across the globe. Scotland is home to approximately 25 per cent of Europe’s offshore wind resource, and we are now starting to build out projects that will harness this potential. The Scottish

R V Ahilan: “one of the big challenges is going to be port infrastructure that can handle huge floating foundations”

Government has shown its ambition to generate the equivalent of half of all energy consumed from renewable sources by 2030, and offshore wind can play a key role in meeting that ambition.”

The floating development by Kincardine Offshore Windfarm Ltd will support the creation of around 110 jobs during assembly, installation and through ongoing operations and maintenance activities. It will have a generating capacity up to a maximum of 50MW. Mr Wheelhouse said of this project: “Once operational, this pioneering, 50MW windfarm will produce enough electricity to power almost 56,000 homes and will create jobs and investment across Scotland through the use of our supply chain. It will also cement our place as one of the world’s leading nations in the innovation and deployment of floating offshore wind. If the technology can be demonstrated at scale, it has huge potential to help Scotland meet its energy needs and to develop a supply chain that can service opportunities elsewhere in Europe and in markets such as Southeast Asia and North America.”

Research undertaken under a joint industry project (JIP) to test and qualify synthetic mooring ropes for floating offshore windfarms suggests that they work and that they would be less expensive than conventional mooring solutions. The JIP, which was funded by the Scottish Government and administered by the Carbon Trust under the Marine Renewables Commercialisation Fund, combined the efforts of several organisations with the objective of testing and qualifying synthetic mooring components. After being successfully tested, nylon has been qualified for permanent application and has confirmed its cost-saving potential.

“In comparison with expensive, heavy conventional chain-based mooring systems, the use of nylon is a costeffective solution in shallower water depths,” said the project partners.

The JIP, which consists of Tension Technology International, rope manufacturer Bridon International, Ideol, which develops floating foundations, Bluewater Energy Services (bringing an end-user perspective in floating tidal), DNV GL and Lloyd’s Register (LR) was set up to qualify nylon via a testing programme so that it can be deployed safely and certified for permanent moorings. OWJ

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26 | OFFSHORE ACCESS/WALK-TO-WORK

Integrated offshore access system takes walk-to-work to the next level The K-Walk motion-compensated gangway is to be installed on Olympic Orion and will be integrated with the ship‘s management and DP systems

Olympic Shipping is the first customer for a new type of offshore access system that is integrated into the ship’s dynamic positioning and management systems

S

peaking at the Offshore Wind Journal conference in London on 7 February 2017, Gijsbert de Jong, market segment director, offshore service vessels and tugs at Bureau Veritas, said he foresees a number of trends in the offshore oil and gas and offshore wind sectors. These include the need for new types of vessels and new, more capable walk-to-work offshore access systems, and it would seem that new more capable offshore gangways are indeed about to enter service.

As reported in the March

2017 issue of our sister publication the Offshore Support Journal, manufacturers of offshore access gangways say clients are looking for systems with greater capacity – including transferring equipment – and the ability to work at a range of heights whilst having a minimal footprint.

Walking to work across a gangway has become commonplace for technicians in the offshore oil and gas and offshore wind industries.

Early, first-generation systems provided the ability to transfer personnel from vessels to a fixed structure,

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

but a new generation of walk-to-work technology has recently been introduced that enables technicians and their equipment to be transferred from a suitably sized vessel direct to an offshore platform, wind turbine or other offshore structure, such as a substation.

Now, it seems, another trend is emerging, with the control and operation of the offshore access system increasingly integrated into the control systems of the vessel on which it is fitted. Far from being stand-alone pieces of equipment bolted onto the deck of a vessel, these next-

generation units would be integrated into the ship in a far more extensive sense.

February 2017 saw Kongsberg Maritime confirm that Olympic Shipping in Norway would be the first customer for its K-Walk integrated vessel gangway solution, which integrates a motion compensated access system with a ship’s dynamic positioning (DP) and management systems.

The K-Walk motion compensated gangway is to be installed on the multipurpose platform supply vessel (MPSV) Olympic Orion and will be integrated with a Kongsberg information management system (K-IMS). The vessel is due to be upgraded in the latter half of 2017.

In addition to integration with the ship’s K-IMS to enable mission and route planning for increased service capability in offshore windfarms, the system also connects with the DP system onboard and a planning station. In this way, says Kongsberg, the system extends vessel availability by increasing the operational weather window.

“Integration of K-Walk with K-IMS is a unique approach that enables in-depth mission planning, resulting in increased productivity and efficiency by finding the preferred route for increased service capability within a windfarm,” claimed Kongsberg Maritime.

“Combining integrated mission planning, automated vessel manoeuvring and gangway hook-up, K-Walk introduces a step-change

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OFFSHORE ACCESS/WALK-TO-WORK | 27

for increasing efficiency and productivity for walk-towork operations of a type that are integral to windfarm construction and maintenance projects,” Kongsberg said.

“While providing a completely safe, motion compensated gangway for the transfer of personnel and materials, integration enables a more efficient approach and connection to turbines and other structures and enhances logistics.”

The system is activated prior to entering a wind turbine’s safety zone, reducing vessel speed and launching the K-Walk hook-up process during approach. Because of the integration with the DP, the gangway is able to move into position while the vessel is still moving, positioning it safely as the vessel arrives on station.

Kongsberg says it anticipates that having the walk-to-work system integrated with the ship's DP system will also make personnel transfers less manpower intensive.

The K-Walk solution for Olympic Orion will have an integrated lift system for the transfer of people and equipment, including electrically driven trolleys (which are currently under design) for movement of pallets across the gangway.

“Overall, K-Walk significantly enhances operational efficiency, which improves productivity, with the ability to serve more wind turbines within the same timeframe,” the company claimed.

Olympic Subsea’s chief operating officer Bjørn Kvalsund said: “We see potential to install this integrated gangway solution onboard several of our vessels to provide walk-to-work services into an expanding and interesting market segment.”

Kongsberg Maritime executive VP, global sales and marketing Stene Førsund said he believes K-Walk will also enhance decision making

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and management during transfer operations and make those operations safer, more predictable and efficient. “It will enable better, realtime and long-term management decisions and empowers safer, more predictable and efficient operations through reduced human interaction and automation based on the deep integration of critical systems onboard,” he said.

In other recent developments, 6 February 2017 saw Safeway BV conduct the first transfer of personnel using its Seagull motion compensated gangway for the offshore oil and gas and offshore wind industries. The transfer was made from Assodivers’ vessel Aethra to Total E&P Nederland BV’s platform L7C. The Seagull offshore access system has been in development for some time, and the company is now ready to market it. Total’s logistics manager Huib Giesberts was present during the first transfer and said he was “impressed” with the system.

Total E&P Nederland BV is looking at the use of gangways to access manned and unmanned platforms.

Aethra is certified as a special purpose ship (SPS) and is a DP class 2 construction support vessel. It was fitted with the Seagull earlier this year. The vessel has accommodation for 87 people and can host up to 50 technicians as ‘industrial personnel’ (IPs) or ‘special persons’ under IMO rules and regulations.

The Seagull motion compensated gangway is approved by Bureau Veritas and will remain on Aethra for the time being. Safeway plans to offer gangways for purchase and rental.

Ampelmann has recently celebrated 100,000 safe transfers utilising the L-type system adopted by Brunei Shell Petroleum (BSP). The L-type system is installed on a

fast crew vessel for daily crew change operations.

The L-type has been operating in Brunei for over two years. Gerbrand Marbus, manager crew change at Ampelmann, said, “We are seeing greater focus in the offshore industry on the safety and cost of existing crew change operations.

“At Ampelmann, we are committed to innovation.

We now have a new L-type range, able to continuously transfer up to 10 people a minute in 2m significant wave height (Hs). This unit can be easily transported in a standard container and only needs a single operator. The improvements can provide a further 30 per cent reduction in the cost of a marine spread and crew costs compared to the alternatives,” he claimed.

Ampelmann said it is continuing to make good progress with the construction of its first access system for operation in ice-prone conditions, Icemann. Assembly of the equipment bay, hexapod and transfer deck are progressing well in the company’s assembly facility.

Another milestone was reached recently with functional testing of the hexapod.

SMST Designers

and Constructors in The Netherlands has been awarded a contract for the delivery of a motion compensated gangway and 3D motion compensated crane for Acta Marine’s new offshore construction vessel, which is being built at Ulstein in Norway.

SMST claims that the system will be the first of its kind “and offers a complete solution for offshore logistics.”

The system is mounted on an integrated tower including height adjustment and a lift for personnel and cargo. It is a complete package with an elevator and access bridge trolley system.

The trolley allows pallets carrying cargo to be transported onto the elevator, which can stop at different levels to optimise the performance of the vessel.

The vessel will also be equipped with a 3D motion compensated crane with a lifting capacity of 6 tonnes. SMST describes the combination of the access system and the crane as “a modular set-up that maximises utilisation and performance whilst focusing on safety and efficient transfer of cargo and personnel.” It can do so in significant wave heights of up to 3m. OWJ

SMST Designers and Constructors in The Netherlands has been awarded a contract for a motion-compensated gangway and 3D motion-compensated crane for Acta Marine’s new vessel

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

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CORROSION CONTROL | 29

Carbon Trust project

aims to improve fatigue standards for jacket foundations The Carbon Trust’s Offshore Wind Accelerator has announced a £2.4 million project, ‘Improved Fatigue Life of Welded Jacket Connections’, that aims to cut the cost of offshore wind by optimising the design of jacket foundations

V

ia the Improved Fatigue Life of Welded Jacket Connections or ‘JaCo’ project, the Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) hopes to reduce costs through improved fatigue standards and validation of faster testing and fabrication methods. Jacket foundations are set to become a more dominant design solution, as monopiles are unlikely to be practical for many future offshore windfarms located in deeper water sites and with larger turbines.

The JaCo project will develop a better understanding of fatigue performance by testing full-size jacket nodes made from existing manual and novel automated welding processes. Coupled with improved standards, it is estimated that a weight reduction of 10 per cent can be achieved if the fatigue resistance (strength) is enhanced by 10–20 per cent through optimised design.

The project will facilitate close collaboration between developers, the supply chain, research organisations and government. Leading offshore wind developers Dong Energy, EnBW, Scottish Power Renewables, Statoil and Vattenfall are supporting the project

The trend towards deeper water and larger wind turbines, such as on the Wikinger offshore windfarm, presents an opportunity to optimise jacket foundation design

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Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

30 | CORROSION CONTROL

together with funding from the Scottish Government.

Belgian material research centre OCAS will use unique and efficient testing techniques developed inhouse to reduce the time needed to complete fatigue tests. Investigation of fatigue performance of full-scale jacket node designs will encompass a larger number of individual tests than would otherwise be possible with the constraints of conventional testing and the project’s duration. The Carbon Trust, as project co-ordinator, will work with OCAS and industry partners to ensure programme delivery including the accelerated testing, numerical analysis and sourcing of nodes. The project will run over a three-year period and will help to drive the use of jackets as one of the leading fixed offshore wind foundation types in the future.

The industry trend towards deeper water and larger wind turbines, such as on the Beatrice, Baltic 2 and Wikinger offshore windfarms, presents an opportunity to optimise jacket foundation designs.

Jacket foundation technology consists primarily of welded tubular space frames fabricated in carbon steel. Each welded connection point is termed a node. Fatigue at these welds is an important design consideration that often proves to be the limiting factor.

The current group of fatigue classes used in most design standards were originally developed in the 1970s and 1980s and may not necessarily reflect advances and improvements in new welding methods, inspection techniques, quality standards and materials. It is expected that accounting for those factors that prove important to fatigue strength will result in improved fatigue performance of welded nodes.

The industry uses standardised S-N curves for the fatigue design of structures. These experimentally based curves describe a design relationship between the applied stress and lifetime for a given type of weld. Full-scale test data for nodes is naturally limited compared to the general weld database, because conventional

large-scale tests based on servo-hydraulic loading methods use a frequency close to or lower than 1Hz – the duration of a fatigue test running to 10 million cycles will exceed 100 days. New testing is therefore costly, and the database for nodes largely consists of older data from the offshore oil and gas industry and does not take into consideration the anticipated beneficial effects of new techniques applied in modern welding and its associated technologies.

OCAS’s novel testing method is based on resonance testing at an increased test frequency of typically 20Hz, significantly speeding up the delivery of results to within just 14 days for a full-scale jacket node. The JaCo project aims to validate the use of what it is anticipated will be less-conservative fatigue S-N curves for offshore wind turbine jacket foundations compared to current practice.

The ability to test a larger number of both manually and automatically welded nodes, combined with improvements in manufacturing techniques and optimised fatigue curves, is expected to lead to reduced weight of jacket foundations and lower capex and installation costs. The project will also be guided by a panel of independent experts, including Cranfield University, DNV GL, Bureau Veritas and BAM (Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing).

Jan Matthiesen, director of offshore wind at the Carbon Trust, said, “With an increasing trend of larger turbines that will be installed in deeper waters, we will see a growth in the use of more economic jacket structures. We have launched this project to drive cost reductions by optimising such structures. In addition, this project will aim to demonstrate the performance of robotic welding, which will allow the supply chain to fabricate at industrial scale.

Working with our partners, innovators and wider stakeholders, the JaCo project is another example on how the collaborative R&D approach of the OWA is accelerating the use of new technology to deliver cost reduction for the offshore wind industry.”

Far-shore windfarms will make corrosion control even more important A review of corrosion protection for offshore windfarms written by authors at Principle Power in the US and Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC) in Brazil*, has highlighted the fact that corrosion protection will become an even more important issue for the offshore wind industry as windfarms are built further from shore.

The authors of the paper note that future offshore windfarms will be sited further offshore and in deeper waters.

In order for the structural integrity of offshore wind structures to be maintained, the use of adequate and cost effective coating systems will need to be employed in combination with adequate health monitoring and in-service inspection plans.

“Based on the publications gathered in this paper, it can be concluded that

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

most of the coating systems applied consist of a Zn/Al-metallization, organic pore filler, several intermediate epoxy-based coats and a polyurethane based topcoat,” they noted, adding that corrosion protection measures for windfarm structures typically include protective coatings and/or cathodic protection; use of a corrosion allowance; inspection/monitoring of corrosion; corrosion-protection-friendly design; and control of environment.”

They note that there are several challenges concerning fatigue life and that early failure of a structure due to fatigue is a consequence that must be considered during the design and inspection phases of a project.

“Increasing the service life of offshore windfarms by preventing early fatigue, testing new alloys and improving design

configurations are the main structural engineering focuses of the offshore wind industry,” they said.

“The complexity related to damage and failure of metallic structures in offshore environments requires the combination of different inspection methods. In order to ensure an accurate assessment… highly-qualified personnel are necessary. With technical advances in inspection methods coupled with a better understanding of corrosive environments in recent years, the future is bright for the development of more efficient coating system technology.” OWJ *Corrosion Protection Systems and Fatigue Corrosion in Offshore Wind Structures: Current Status and Future Perspectives, Seth J Price 1, and Rita B Figueira. http://bit.ly/2oOU4uT

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TECHNOLOGY | 33

INNOVATION EXCHANGE BRINGS BESPOKE PROGRAMME TO COST-REDUCTION EFFORT AN INNOVATION EXCHANGE PROGRAMME LAUNCHED IN THE UK IS DESIGNED TO AID INTRODUCTION OF ‘DISRUPTIVE TECHNOLOGY’ AND ACCELERATE COST REDUCTION, AS ANDREW WILLIAMS REPORTS

I

n January 2017, the Offshore Wind Innovation Hub (OWIH) launched the Offshore Wind Innovation Exchange (OWiX), a new initiative that aims to accelerate cost reduction in offshore wind by matching industry challenges with innovative solutions adapted from other sectors of the economy. So, what will be the main activities carried out by OWiX? And how exactly does it intend to carry out its ‘matching’ activities?

As Andrew Macdonald, senior innovation manager at the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult explained, the exchange is the first in a series of planned activities

by OWIH – itself a joint initiative of ORE Catapult and Innovate UK’s Knowledge Transfer Network, set up as the chief body to co-ordinate activities across the entire innovation landscape for offshore wind in the UK. “The OWIH, and its first initiative OWiX, will be critical tools in drawing new disruptive technologies into the sector from the UK’s most innovative companies and in bringing industry together to align behind the sector’s innovation priorities,” he told OWJ. The need to ramp up innovation activities across the industry is increasingly pressing in view of the fact that, in 2015, nearly 5 per cent, or 3.5 terawatt hours, of the UK’s electricity was generated by offshore wind, with the sector also tasked by the UK Government to bring down the levelised cost of energy (LCOE) to £100 per megawatt hour (MHh) by 2020 and £85/MWh by 2030. Moreover, supply chain plans required under the contract for difference (CFD) process call on offshore developers to identify

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the potential to increase both UK content and jobs through a more co-ordinated approach to industrial strategy.

According to Nee-Joo Teh, energy systems and Newton/Prosperity Fund lead at the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN), the offshore wind industry, with support from ORE Catapult, has already made a number of strategic investments and progress in this area, and the Cost Reduction Monitoring Framework (CRMF) has shown that cost reduction is ahead of projection, falling by 32 per cent since 2012 through adoption of larger turbines.

“However, the industry recognises that further reduction, growth and job creation are still required. This is where OWiX comes in to help the industry and the government industrial strategy,” he said.

“Building on past successes from KTN team members in supporting innovation transfer within the healthcare, automotive and aerospace sectors, we have designed a bespoke programme to work directly with offshore wind operators and top-tier suppliers to facilitate access to effective solutions from other sectors, which may help with cost reduction in offshore wind.

Nee-Joo Teh: “the exchange will enhance the technology pipeline available to meet medium-term cost reduction targets”

In doing so, OWiX will also help provide new opportunities for UK businesses to work together and strengthen the national supply chain.”

Recognising the challenges faced by the offshore wind sector in reducing costs in the medium term to compete with other energy sources, as well as the significant effort already being expended to do so, Mr Teh believes the added value of OWiX lies in its cross-sectoral approach to providing new ways to meet such challenges and the depth of support it makes available to the sector.

In doing so, Mr Teh expects that the exchange will enhance the technology pipeline available to meet medium-term cost-reduction targets for the sector and provide new opportunities for UK businesses and innovation stakeholders to enter this global market perhaps for the first time.

He also anticipates that it will align investments in the innovation infrastructure – such as the Catapult network – in order to demonstrate the value of cross-sector working.

“We will match these challenges to potential solution providers following a facilitation process, in order to enable commercial sensitivities to be recognised and accommodated. The matching process is complete when short-listed solution providers are introduced to the offshore wind problem owners. Once again, skilled facilitation is required to capture the new ideas and translate the innovation concepts back to practical applications,” he told OWJ. Ultimately, Mr Teh hopes that OWiX will benefit not only the offshore wind sector but UK industry and its supply chain as a whole, helping to introduce radical new technologies and processes to the sector and enabling new collaborations and partnerships from which both sides will benefit.

“The medium-term cost reduction targets identified may be met sooner, and longer term targets may be brought forward,” he concluded. “We also anticipate global opportunities for operators and suppliers, as solutions developed in the UK by OWiX are likely to have an international audience.” OWJ

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

34 | GRID CONNECTION

TSOs sign agreement on wind power hub

as Elia invests in modular grid

L

ate March 2017 saw transmission system operators (TSOs) TenneT in the Netherlands and Germany and Energinet in Denmark sign an agreement for the development of a largescale electricity system for renewables in the North Sea. The so-called North Sea Wind Power Hub has the potential to supply 70–100 million inhabitants of Europe with renewable energy by 2050.

At about the same time, the board of directors of Elia approved investment in an electricity plug or modular offshore grid (MOG) in the North Sea that they believe will be of strategic importance for the future of Belgium in terms of its participation in the development of renewable energy in the North Sea. Mel Kroon, chief executive officer of TenneT, and Torben Glar Nielsen, chief technology officer of Energinet, said the North Sea wind power hub would act as a connection point for thousands of offshore wind turbines. They aim to build the hub in a shallow-

The potential benefits of transmission hubs and modular grids for the transmission of electricity generated from renewables were both in focus in early 2017

water location in the North Sea with optimal conditions for the transmission of electricity to European consumers.

“Building one or more artificial islands in the middle of the North Sea sounds like a science fiction project, but it could actually be a very efficient and affordable way for North Sea countries to meet the future demand for more renewable electricity,” said Mr Nielsen, noting that a location such as Dogger Bank has many advantages, not least that it could significantly reduce transmission costs.

The TSOs anticipate that

Transmission grids and hubs are expected to be more efficient, cost-effective and environmentally friendly with the former acting as interconnectors between states

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

the North Sea hub could transmit electricity from wind energy to The Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, the UK and Belgium. They anticipate that the transmission cables from offshore windfarms would simultaneously function as interconnectors between the energy markets of the aforementioned countries.

Apart from transmitting wind energy to the countries in question, these ‘wind connectors’ will enable them to trade electricity.

Having signed the agreement, TenneT and Energinet plan to spend “a few years” investigating the potential of one or more power islands. If the TSOs decide to go ahead with the project, a power link island could be developed by 2035.

Elia says the electricity plug or MOG will connect offshore windfarms in the North Sea such as Rentel, Northwester 2, Mermaid and Seastar to the Belgian grid in a costeffective and reliable way and create opportunities for future offshore wind development and interconnections with neighbouring countries of the type also envisaged by the TSOs. The modular offshore grid includes an offshore platform to provide connections to the new windfarms. This will be located approximately 40 km from the coast of Zeebrugge in Belgium. Three 220kV submarine cables will link the platform with the Stevin substation in Zeebrugge, so that wind energy can be injected in the Belgian grid.

The total installed capacity of the four windfarms is expected to be 1.03 gigawatts.

Chris Peeters, chief

executive officer of Elia, said “This is a very important step for Elia. The modular grid is a first building block of a future North Sea grid and will expand our activities in Belgium from onshore to offshore. A modular grid can generate opportunities for the economy, help to develop new technology and lead to the creation of highquality jobs.”

The MOG is due to enter service in the third quarter of 2019. Elia has already undertaken seabed surveys to investigate soil conditions along the cable route and at the platform location. Detailed design of the platform is currently being undertaken, and other tenders for the main construction contracts are ongoing. The estimated total investment is approximately €400 million (US$430 million), which includes construction work by Elia and the acquisition of assets built

by Rentel. Once the modular offshore grid is constructed, Elia will own and operate the offshore assets.

“The benefits of the modular offshore grid compared to a direct connection are multiple,” said Elia. “It allows windfarms connected to it to inject wind energy directly into the grid, even when there is a loss or failure of one of the offshore cables. Because of its modular character, construction can be phased and synchronised to the different time schedules of individual windfarms. It is also more cost-efficient and environmentally friendly and will facilitate a reduction of the total cable length by 40km and, as a result, reduce potential disturbance of the seabed and marine life.” OWJ

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36 | OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE

Research team to develop remote inspection and repair technology for offshore windfarms

The HOME-Offshore project will see robotic hybrid solutions for the maintenance and operation of offshore windfarms and associated infrastructure such as cabling

Remotely operated systems have long been used offshore – now scientists are looking at their potential in the offshore wind industry, as Andrew Williams explains

I

n early February, a UK research consortium announced that it had been awarded a £4 million grant to create remote inspection and repair technologies using robotics and autonomous systems. So, what exactly will the project entail?

What robotics and autonomous systems (RAS) technologies might be developed? And what are the potential applications in the offshore wind energy sector?

The key aim of the Holistic Operation and Maintenance for Energy from Offshore Wind Farms (HOME-Offshore) project is to address critical weaknesses in windfarm asset management and reduce the risks associated with human intervention and inspection. To help them in carrying out these objectives, the project team – made up of internationally recognised experts based at Manchester, Warwick, Cranfield and Durham universities, as well as at the Ocean Systems Laboratory and the Smart Systems Group at Heriot-Watt University – has received funding to deliver a human-robotics hybrid solution for the maintenance and operation of offshore windfarms that will be used to inspect the condition of subsea power cables, identify problems early and, ultimately, extend their lifespan.

As David Flynn, associate professor and director of the Smart Systems Group at Heriot-Watt University explained, the consortium will

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

also adopt an innovative ‘fusion prognostics’ approach to predict the the remaining useful life (RUL) of offshore equipment.

“This will be coupled with innovations in sensor technology, robotics and autonomous systems. This hybrid O&M approach will provide access to previously inaccessible information and enable a new capability in human interaction with these remote assets,” he told OWJ. According to professor Flynn, the project was at least partly prompted by the fact that the UK currently faces a variety of challenges in maintaining its energy security – particularly in view of the ongoing ‘energy swings’ across the country and the need for longterm resilience and sustainability in the energy system.

Although offshore wind energy goes some way towards addressing these challenges, he stresses that the deployment of what he describes as ‘energy-generating assets’ in remote and harsh environments is also associated with a range of very specific challenges – including those relating to assessments of the health of these systems, as well how best to reduce costs and improve safety and access. In moving towards a solution, the project team considered a hybrid human-robotics approach to be the best way ahead. “Prognostics and enhanced remote inspection and repair capabilities will be critical to affordable and secure energy within the system,” he explained.

Such capabilities could also enable early adopters of the technology to grab a slice of the sizeable operation and maintenance (O&M) market, which professor Flynn reveals has the potential to form an industry worth £2 billion annually by 2025 and position the UK for a much larger market in Europe. This is in addition to the value an improved O&M strategy could have in increasing the lifetime of the underlying £120 billion UK offshore wind asset base and in reducing running costs to taxpayers and billpayers.

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OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE | 37

“However,” professor Flynn explained, “there remains a lack of consensus on how best to monitor and manage these high value assets, with industry describing present methods as at times primitive. Offshore infrastructure is inherently complex.

Consequently, maintenance is expensive and potentially dangerous since human intervention and inspection is often required at present to manage this complexity. Avoiding direct human intervention is thus key to reducing costs and managing safety.”

In professor Flynn’s view, the chief limitation of existing remote condition and process monitoring (CPM) applications is that they only possess the sensor capability to focus on single subsystems or domains – such as gearboxes or generators – and not the complex system in its entirety.

Ultimately, he argues, this means they leave the other critical subsystems of the windfarm in isolation and limit the potential of multiple coordinated actions between adaptive collaborative systems.

In order for embedded tools to support the decision-making process and interoperate, he also believes it is necessary that they have the capability to deal with and understand the highly dynamic and complex environment where these networks are going to operate.

“Shared knowledge representation between embedded tools is therefore necessary to provide them with the required common situation awareness,” he explained. “Two sources can provide this type of information: the domain knowledge extracted from the expert and the inferred knowledge from the processed sensor data.In both cases, it will be necessary for the information to be stored, accessed and shared efficiently by the deliberative agents in near real time.”

In helping the industry to move towards the creation of such sophisticated systems, professor Flynn reveals that the project will investigate replacing the present piecemeal approach to O&M with such a co-ordinated agent approach – in the process, allowing greater automation and removing the requirement for much human intervention.

To begin with, the team will draw on cutting-edge physics to develop what professor Flynn describes as a knowledge-driven prognostics/diagnostic model of a windfarm that integrates previously isolated electrical, mechanical, thermal and lifetime/ ageing subsystems. The expectation is that this will provide a much improved understanding of what is happening across the windfarm and integrate disciplines that have traditionally operated as independent silos.

Modus Seabed Intervention and Saab Dynamics upgraded a Sabertooth underwater unit to give it greater endurance and speed and a more advanced sensor payload

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In the second phase, the consortium will validate the knowledgebased model against real-world and experimental data and create a data-analytics driven model interconnecting performance and diagnostic information from previously isolated subsystems.“Thirdly, the project will identify complementary advanced sensing methodologies, including automated and robotic inspection, to fill in system information gaps, improve the quality of information available and reduce manual onsite inspection,” he said. “The goal is an automated diagnostic and prognostic suite of integrated tools to better manage windfarm O&M.” As the HOME-Offshore project team works towards the development of more sophisticated automated and robotic inspection methodologies, other organisations are also moving ahead with the deployment of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) in the offshore wind sector.

One of the early trailblazers in the field is the UK start-up Modus Seabed Intervention, which, during February, completed system integration and trialling of one of the subsea industry’s first commercially available hybrid unmanned underwater vehicles.

The milestone is the culmination of a three-year collaboration with Saab Dynamics, which saw the Modus team upgrade the specification of the Saab Sabertooth to create a prototype with greater endurance and speed – whilst simultaneously developing more advanced sensor payload packages and methods of operating.

Following a comprehensive trialling and integration schedule in Swedish and British waters, Modus is now preparing to embark on the first commercial deployment of the device, offering the system for use in survey and inspection projects across a wide range of industries, including oil and gas, interconnectors and offshore renewables.

Operators can opt to control the vehicle fully autonomously or as a tethered ROV. Moreover, whereas typical autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) must generally remain in constant motion, the Modus device features a dedicated thruster pattern, meaning it is capable of hovering and operating much more flexibly – an attribute the company claims provides a highly differentiated capability for inspection and light intervention applications.

Elsewhere, Houston-based technology company Forum Energy Technologies (FET) has recently been selected to supply the University of Limerick with one of its Sub-Atlantic Comanche ROVs. The 2,000m depth-rated observation-class ROV, as well as its linked launch and recovery system, will be used by staff at the university’s Mobile and Marine Robotics Research Centre (MMRRC) to support its ongoing subsea inspection and intervention work on renewable energy infrastructure and aid research and development efforts aimed at the ongoing roll-out of marine renewable energy around the country’s coast.

The centre chose the FET craft because of its high thrust to drag ratio, which it says will enable staff to control it in the strong waves, currents and winds typical of conditions facing the offshore renewables industry around the coast of Ireland and the UK. In carrying out its tasks, the centre will also kit out the Comanche system to a high specification with precision positioning and navigation systems, as well as a camera, lighting systems and sonars.

The fully equipped ROV will be housed at the Limerick Docks where MMRRC will carry out experiments, tests and demonstrations. It will also be mobilised on vessels at other ports of Ireland for offshore work at wind, tidal and wave energy test sites and windfarms.” OWJ

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

38 | SERVICE OPERATION VESSELS

IN-SERVICE EXPERIENCE FEEDS INTO SOV OPERATIONS AND DESIGN The most recent generation of SOVs is purpose-designed with wind turbine technicians and their work in mind

THE CONCEPT OF A SERVICE OPERATION VESSEL IS STILL A RELATIVELY NEW ONE IN THE OFFSHORE SECTOR, AND CONCEPTS OF OPERATION AND THE DESIGN OF THESE SPECIALISED VESSELS IS EVOLVING STEADILY

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

E

arly examples of service operation vessels (SOVs) were often based on existing offshore vessel designs.

Later, purpose-designed units began to enter service, usually intended for operation on a specific windfarm.

Now, however, with a couple of years of experience operating SOVs on offshore windfarms, Siemens is looking at ways to reduce the cost of operations, fully utilise the vessels it has on charter and enable them to provide O&M services on more than one windfarm.

René Cornelis Wigmans, head of maritime and aviation solutions at Siemens Wind Power, said: “We were the first OEM to offer these so called ‘floating warehouses’ for far-from-shore windfarms. Now, after months spent familiarising ourselves with this new concept, we are looking at new ideas to enhance utilisation of SOVs through vessel sharing.”

Traditionally, vessel sharing involves an agreement between partners in a consortium to operate a liner service along a specified route, using a specified number of vessels.

Now, it seems, Siemens is looking at doing

something similar and has initiated a project to determine how a fleet of SOVs could be shared between multiple offshore windfarms to maximise vessel utilisation.

Mr Wigmans says that, since SOV operations got started two years ago, vessel performance has been higher than expected.

“This means that the SOVs assigned to specific sites are not being fully utilised to their full potential,” he says, which opens up a raft of options to make even better use of them.

“We are running a project to develop a roadmap to increase the utilisation rate of SOVs,” he explained. Siemens believes that sharing ships between windfarms would help reduce the cost of doing so to each. Currently, the project is focusing on shared charters for SOVs between windfarms off the coast of Sylt in northern Germany, where a couple of projects are in operation. “In layman’s terms,” he said, “the project aims to increase SOV utilisation to its full potential, reduce costs associated with offshore logistics and increase SOV flexibility to promote a ‘multifarm’ setup.”

In the past, SOVs were designed for

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SERVICE OPERATION VESSELS | 39

use on specific offshore windfarms, but Mr Wigmans and his colleagues believe that relatively small design changes could be used to adapt vessels to meet the demands of multiple windfarms.

The kind of design changes he has in mind include adaptations in respect of the height of monopiles on different windfarms, tidal variations and the ability to carry tools and spare parts for more than one type of wind turbine, should the need arise.

“The unique design and structure of SOVs would need to be modified to a more open approach,” Mr Wigmans said, noting that – at the moment – the scope for using first-generation SOVs on more than one windfarm is limited because they are of windfarm-specific design.

To be able to service more than one windfarm, SOVs would need to have more flexible equipment such as gangways so that a vessel could service turbines with different types of monopiles or jackets and cope with tidal variations across windfarms.

“Increased SOV utilisation has its risks,” said Mr Wigmans. “It might put pressure on resource allocation and on service technicians and materials if a vessel was put to more than one use. If utilisation increased, room for further improvement may be difficult to achieve if vessels are already working at full capability.

Nevertheless,” he said, “opportunities for SOV sharing are definitely there.”

Concepts of operations for SOVs are not the only thing that is changing, however.

As Håkong Vevang, chartering manager at Østensjø Rederi in Norway explained, owners such as Østensjø have invested in offshore wind-specific vessels, which are designed from scratch for their role. “They used to be based on modified platform supply vessels (PSVs),” he told OWJ. “We have taken a very different approach that enables safe, stepless transfer of windfarm personnel. Windfarm technicians on our vessels walk straight from the workshop on board onto a turbine. The flow of personnel and equipment is optimised in a way it wasn’t before on designs that had PSVs as their basis.

“Working closely with Rolls-Royce, we produced a design that keeps distances short and reduces the amount of climbing technicians need to do. Technicians can roll trolleys with their equipment to work.

There are no ‘thresholds’. The elevators they use to take them up to the access system (which is being supplied by Uptime in Norway) are dimensioned, and their capacity is specific to the requirement.

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The way the vessel is designed also ensures that windfarm technicians live in a productive, low-noise environment.

The vessels have more than enough workshop space, and there is plenty of space on deck for containers.” Looking ahead, Mr Vevang said he anticipates that walk-to-work systems will become more thoroughly integrated into vessel systems, such as dynamic positioning – in fact, this is already happening with the latest offshore access systems. “Servicing multiple windfarms would not be a problem for our vessels,” he concluded.

Bibby Marine Services’ SOV Bibby WaveMaster 1 was launched at Damen Shipyards Galați in Romania on 24 March.

Primarily intended for the offshore wind industry, it was designed from the outset for the offshore wind industry, despite other potential uses. When completed, Bibby Marine Services Ltd, part of Bibby Line Group, will deploy the vessel to support forthcoming offshore wind construction and O&M projects in the North Sea. Stephen Blaikie, chief executive officer at Bibby Marine Services Ltd, said “This is an important key milestone in the delivery of the vessel. Sea trials will start soon, and we will take delivery in August. We are very impressed with the quality of the build, and the whole process has gone smoothly.”

Peter Robert, director business development and market intelligence at Damen, said “Carrying out the integrated hardware in the loop simulator analyses of the vessel plus DP system plus gangway in a time domain simulation with the actual controllers connected to it proves, in real-

life conditions, safe operations in the 2.5m significant wave height , as required by the tenders. Based on this, the shipowner can guarantee site-specific vessel performance and safe operations.”

Bibby WaveMaster 1 was designed and built specifically for the transfer and accommodation of offshore personnel and aims to maximise working time, technician comfort and safety. With a DYNPOS (AUTR) DP2 system, the 90m vessel has a motion compensated access system for walk-to-work transfers.

Although primarily designed with offshore wind in mind, the vessel is capable of a much wider scope of work in a variety of offshore industries. A range of options are available including an additional deck crane with up to a 24-tonne capacity, tanks arrangements suited to liquids such as glycols and low-flashpoint liquids with separate delivery intakes and facilities for diving support and ROV operations.

Bernhard Schulte’s second SOV, Windea Leibnitz, was due to start work on behalf of Siemens Wind Power Service in April. Bernhard Schulte and ICBC Leasing recently held a naming ceremony for the vessel in Ulsteinvik, Norway, at Ulstein Verft where the vessel was built.

The vessel was designed by Ulstein Design & Solutions AS. Starting in April, the vessel was due to begin work on the Sandbank windfarm in the German Bight, transporting windfarm technicians to service the 72 wind turbines installed there.

Windea Leibnitz and sister vessel Windea la Cour are co-owned with Chinese company ICBC Leasing. OWJ

Once delivered, Bibby Wavemaster 1 will work in the North Sea market

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

40 | GEOTECHNICAL VESSELS

GEOTECHNICAL DRILLSHIP CAN OUTPERFORM A JACK-UP In late 2016, Geo in Denmark introduced a new geotechnical drillship to the market with a unique heave compensated drilling system that will bring enhanced capability to the offshore wind industry

P

rimarily but not exclusively aimed at the fast-growing offshore wind market, the geotechnical drillship Freja is the result of a “strategic collaboration” between the engineering consultancy company Geo and NCT Offshore. The quality of a geotechnical investigation, including the samples and cores collected from the seabed, is crucial for the design and optimisation of the foundations used on an offshore windfarm. The type of foundation used influences construction cost and, ultimately, the cost of the electricity generated by an offshore windfarm.

Also fitted out as a dynamic positioning class 2 (DP2) ROV support ship, Freja has a drilling setup that is built around a specially designed active heave compensated work platform.

As Geo’s marine survey director Jens Brink Clausen explained to OWJ in an exclusive interview, offshore windfarms are moving into deeper water, and Geo has identified an opportunity to apply its geotechnical drilling expertise in that market and others like it.

“Usually you need a large jack-up in deep water,” Mr Brink Clausen told OWJ, “but a jack-up is expensive and cannot quickly relocate from site to site. With a heave compensated drilling system on a vessel like Freja, you have all of the advantages of a jack-up

Freja has the kind of geotechical drilling capability normally associated with drilling on land

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

in a compact, less expensive and very flexible platform. With our Geobor-S large-diameter drilling system, you can use a floating platform to get high-quality, large-diameter cores and really good core samples, even with challenging seabed conditions.”

The principle of the heave compensation system is that the entire drilling floor – including drill rig – is heave compensated and compensates for the movement of the ship. This means that the working deck is stationary, and the vessel follows the movements of the waves.

The heave compensation system was developed by MacArtney and is designed to provide compensation of ±3m of heave.

MacArtney says the platform includes a roll compensating function compensating for the vessel’s roll by ±3 degrees. Active heave compensation is achieved by four fast-reacting, high-performance winches mounted on the corner pillars. The winches are controlled by an integrated control system, which ensures that the complete platform is synchronised with the vessel’s dynamic positioning control system.

“Being able to conduct drilling work from a stationary deck means that we are able to apply drilling techniques usually limited to onshore drilling,” Mr Brink Clausen told OWJ. “On conventional vessels, only the drill string itself is usually heave compensated.”

Geo’s setup is designed and optimised to operate in water depths of approximately 15–60m. The heave compensated system on the vessel is very flexible and can undertake a range of technical services from high-quality geotechnical drilling using the Geobor-S system to a range of cone penetration tests and vibrocore rigs. The vessel is also optimised for a geophysical spread including sidescan sonar, sub-bottom profiler, magnetometer and hull-mounted multibeam echo sounder. This kind of drilling technique ensures much higher sample quality than is usually attainable with traditional geotechnical drill ships, which apply the so called ‘piggy back’ approach.

“This kind of multipurpose vessel will provide a cost-effective, flexible setup, which can be customised for individual projects,” Mr Brink Clausen explained. “Freja also has top-level stationkeeping capability and can undertake a wide range of projects ranging from large-scale offshore drilling campaigns with core drilling or sampling, handled by the vessel’s onboard laboratory, to projects that only require shallow CPT and vibrocore. The cost structure is set up in such a way that it reflects the technical solution required.”

Mr Brink Clausen said the alliance between Geo and NCT Offshore will strengthen both parties, as the companies’ services complement each other well. Geo has one of the industry’s longest track records in geotechnical site investigations for offshore wind projects. NCT Offshore operates the vessel as a platform for Geo’s geotechnical drilling and seabed equipment.

Already at work in the offshore wind sector, at the time of writing, Freja was mobilising to work for Vattenfall Wind on Denmark’s nearshore windfarms and has already undertaken projects on behalf of industry leaders such as Dong Energy. OWJ

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Smart manufacturing helps Sparrows Group break into offshore wind industry

E

arly 2017 saw Sparrows Group, a company best known for the equipment it builds for the offshore oil and gas industry, break into the offshore wind industry with a contract to supply 103 cranes for the turbines on ScottishPower Renewables’ 714 MW East Anglia ONE offshore windfarm.

All of the cranes for the turbines on East Anglia ONE will be designed and manufactured at Sparrows Group’s facilities in Aberdeen for Granada Material Handling on behalf of ScottishPower Renewables. A crane will be installed on each of the windfarm’s 102 turbines with a further crane used for training purposes.

Sparrows Group has long specialised in providing equipment and integrated engineering services to the offshore energy industry. The contract is the company’s largest ever in the renewables sector. The cranes, which are part of the firm’s offshore windspecific WindMaster range, are derived from similar cranes the company has long provided to the offshore oil and gas industry. Sparrows Group says that 99 per cent of the parts for the cranes procured in the UK. Production is expected to start early 2017 with final delivery scheduled mid-2018.

Innovation doesn’t have to take the form of blue sky thinking or a brand new piece of equipment – it can take the form of adapting an already successful product for a new market, having perfected its design in a related sector

ABOVE: The cranes that Sparrows Group will supply for East Anglia ONE benefit from units the company has long supplied to the oil and gas market

Speaking to OWJ at the Scottish Renewables conference in Glasgow in January 2017, Tony Cumming, Sparrows Group’s senior business development director, said the cranes the company has developed for the offshore wind industry benefitted from long experience building cranes for the offshore oil and gas sector.

He noted that working in that environment had enabled the company to “strip cost out” of the manufacturing process and that it would apply “smart manufacturing techniques” that it pioneered in the offshore oil and gas market to build the cranes for the windfarm. “We are a DNV GL-approved supplier with a long track record and have been in after-market support for 40 years,” Mr Cummings told OWJ. “We bring all of that to the offshore wind industry.”

Stewart Mitchell, chief executive officer of Sparrows Group, said: “East Anglia ONE is a large scale and high-profile windfarm. This contract award is recognition of the expertise

warranty period in mind. “We take into account the full asset cycle right at the start,” he said.

“Our experience maintaining and operating a variety of cranes and brands puts us in a unique position to understand how future maintenance can be optimised through good design, increased efficiency and reducing cost across the lift cycle,” all of which are sought after in offshore wind as the industry seeks to drive down costs.

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was certainly impressed with the contract: “Sparrows is using expertise developed in the oil and gas sector and transferring it to other energy and manufacturing sectors. Securing this major contract is a significant milestone for the company, and demonstrates the opportunities that exist for the Scottish supply chain,” she said. “Diversification into multiple sectors and industries is part of our long-term strategy in achieving our business growth aspirations nationally and internationally.” OWJ

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

that exists in the UK and we are working hard to ensure we play our part in cementing Aberdeen and the northeast as a local skills hub and providing job security for our employees. We have utilised our extensive knowledge of operations and maintenance to design a range of highly reliable and low maintenance offshore wind turbine cranes that are ideal for the renewables sector.”

Mr Cumming explained that the company’s offshore wind turbine crane is a ram luffing unit and an evolution of Sparrows Group’s original 2 tonne crane model, which it has been manufacturing since 1987. He described that crane as a standardised design with a number of optional features that made it highly customisable – including the application on offshore turbines.

Like the original crane, the cranes that the company is to build for the renewables market are designed for low maintenance, to be highly reliable, and were developed with much more than just the

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INNOVATIONS | 43

Container and pallet handling system can make work on SOVs safer and more efficient Automating the process of handling equipment transported on service operation vessels can make operations more cost-effective and safer, a well known manufacturer argues

A

s highlighted elsewhere in this issue of OWJ, design and operation of service operation vessels (SOVs) is evolving rapidly. However, the way that containers and pallets stored within them, that contain the tools and equipment needed by windfarm technicians are handled, has received relatively little attention.

Even on the most advanced SOVs, pallets are usually handled manually, which is manpower intensive and not without risks on a moving vessel.

How much more efficient might the process of loading tools and equipment, handling them on a SOV and lifting them onto a turbine once the vessel has arrived at the windfarm be if the entire process could be automated? That was the question that Palfinger Marine in Norway asked itself after discussing the way vessels currently work with shipowners and charterers. Palfinger’s answer to the question is its container and pallet handling system (CPHS), which it developed for safe, efficient and easy handling of containers, pallets and loose goods on SOVs, from the quayside to the turbine.

A standard CPHS would consist of rails and a transverse bridge below deck

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in a container storage area with a transverse trolley with integrated jigger winch, an adjustable container spreader with automated twistlocks and a hydraulically-operated pallet fork unit and 1 tonne safe working load auxiliary winch.

“The system is very flexible and suitable for various vessel designs as well as for retrofitting to existing vessels,” Sverre Mowinckel-Nilsen, sales director at Palfinger Marine Norway told OWJ. “Owners and charterers often specify a pallet handling system for use below deck, but they don’t usually specify what kind of system they want. The basic idea behind the CPHS is a remote controlled system that eliminates the need for personnel below decks. This makes handling stores much more efficient and much safer. We have shown the system to some well known owners and charterers and they quickly

understood its potential benefits.”

The overhead crane in the CPHS is a specialised piece of equipment equipped with a telescopic container spreader that can handle 10ft and 20ft ISO and PWHC containers. The CPHS can be delivered in two different configurations: with the container yoke for containers in longitudinal direction or in a transverse direction. The key difference between the two configurations are the free installation height required in the container store.

The system can be adapted to the length and breadth of the container store available.

In the kind of fully specified CPHS that Palfinger Marine is offering owners and charters, the ship’s crane loads containers from the quayside through a hatch, directly into the hold.

Once in the hold, containers are

Palfinger believes a container and pallet handling system of the type it has developed could make SOV operations safer and more efficient

moved to the correct position using the container spreader.

Once at the windfarm, a hydraulically-operated pallet forklift removes pallets from the containers and places the required equipment in a lift, which takes it above deck.

At this point the ship’s crane takes over and lifts the pallet directly onto the turbine.

Because the crane has 3D motion compensation it can safely position the load on the turbine even though the vessel is moving – the compensation system eliminates the effects of pitch, roll and heave.

A taste of what the CPHS can offer is provided by a contract Palfinger Marine recently signed with Ulstein Verft in Norway to deliver a winch package and a container handling system on Acta Marine’s new construction support vessel, a vessel that the Dutch company intends to operate primarily in the offshore wind industry. In addition to the complete winch package, Palfinger has been contracted to deliver a below-deck skidding and securing system for the SX195 design.

Mr Mowinckel-Nilsen said the container handling system for the vessel is customised to meet a requirement to handle 12 containers and will be divided into two separate skidding lines.

Each skidding line consists of two rail tracks, each equipped with two hydraulic cylinders so that containers can be skidded in both directions.

The containers are skidded by use of movable ‘push wagons’ which are connected to the skidding tracks. In addition to skidding containers, the system also has removable guidance systems to position containers on the skidding line. It also has removable position bumpers (to align containers towards the locking system) and movable container locking devices and seafastenings (four units for each container). OWJ

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

44 | VESSEL TECHNOLOGY

Motion monitoring enhances vessel safety and reduces risk A vessel motion monitoring system developed by Automasjon og Data in Norway is being tested on a number of vessels servicing offshore windfarms

V

essel motion monitoring systems (VMMSs) have proved to be useful to vessel owners in improving the safety of crew and reducing damage to their assets. A VMMS can improve safety during critical operations and improve the health of windfarm technicians during transits from ports to offshore windfarms.

Vessel motion can be one of the limiting factors in transferring service engineers to offshore wind turbine structures. If the motion is too extreme, service operations could be delayed or aborted to prevent accidents or damage, Automasjon og Data’s managing director Jon Arne Silgjerd told OWJ. During transit to an offshore windfarm, engineers and crew can be affected by seasickness, which affects their performance or can mean technicians are unable to work, said Mr Silgjerd.

“Our VMMS for windfarm workboats can monitor the risk of getting seasickness. If there is that risk, the vessel operator can slow down or change direction to reduce the likelihood of seasickness,” he added. The vessel’s motion is displayed on a

Jon Arne Silgjerd: “the VMMS will warn vessel operators if the risk is too high”

workstation to warn crew of the risks to their passengers.

During the transfer phase, when windfarm technicians are moving from a vessel to a turbine, the system can reduce the risk of injuries or accidents. “When the vessel is on site, there could be dynamic impacts on wind turbine foundations,” Mr Silgjerd explained from the exhibition floor at Riviera’s Offshore Wind Journal Conference, which was held in February in London, UK. “We can measure that and measure slippage of vessels against the foundation and can predict the risk.”

He continued, “The VMMS will warn the vessel operator if the risk is too high. The vessel then needs to wait until the risk is lower or turn back to port. So, vessel operators do not have to risk the safety of engineers during ladder transfers to wind turbines.” Vessel owners could even keep their vessel in port if they know in advance that vessel motion will be too high for safe offshore operations. This would be a cost and time saving for owners and subcontractors.

The VMMS has up to three motion sensors that are linked to a computer that records the data and calculates the motion. The key motion parameters are displayed on a workstation, so the crew are aware of risks during critical operations. The sensors measure vessel pitch, roll, heave, surge, sway and yaw. There is also an impact sensor on the bow to measure pressure between the vessel and the foundation. Accelerations can also be measured in the passenger cabin for the analysis of comfort parameters.

Vessel owners can also add accelerometers, inclinometers and meteorological sensors. Another addition can be a downwardlooking radar for wave and air gap measurements. Data is transferred wirelessly from the sensors to the onboard computer. Data can also be sent to shore for tracking and further analysis, or it can be stored onboard a vessel for later analysis or for incident investigation.

Mr Silgjerd said the VMMS has been tested on different vessels for a couple of years by the Carbon Trust. Denmark-headquartered World Marine Offshore has used Automasjon og Data’s VMMS on two of its Windserver vessels. Japanese vessel owner Tokyo Kisen Co is using the system on catamarans that are designed for transporting and transferring technicians to offshore windfarms.

“We installed our system on one of these vessels, which has been going out to floating wind turbines, to test how the vessel behaves in different sea states,” said Mr Silgjerd. “There is an enormous amount of data to be analysed and reported to Tokyo Kisen.”

He expects more interest from existing users of the VMMS and to pick up more tests and contracts. Mr Silgjerd said: “This year, Tokyo Kisen will carry on with additional testing. We also expect that the Carbon Trust will continue to support our data analysis on windfarm crew transfer vessel behaviour in different sea states.”

Automasjon og Data also provides systems for weather stations, gangway monitoring, wind profiling, helideck monitoring and measuring vibration, dynamic impact and structural strain. OWJ

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INSTALLATION VESSELS | 47

GEOSEA OPTS FOR MONOHULL, NOT JACK-UP, FOR NEXTGENERATION INSTALLATION UNIT Large monohulls rather than selfpropelled jack-ups could be the future of the offshore wind installation market, a recent order suggests

Orion will be a monohull, rather than a jack-up, like the vessel A2SEA looked at several years ago

I

n 2012, A2SEA, the well known owneroperator of foundation and turbine installation vessels, was developing a new installation vessel with Teekay Corporation. A2SEA got as far as sending out specifications to shipyards to obtain pricing for the project, which was based on the conversion of an oil tanker rather than a jack-up vessel.

“We want to be sure not only that the vessel can install foundations but also which types of foundation it can install. We are looking at using the vessel to install not just jacket foundations but monopiles and others,” said A2SEA. Collaborating with Teekay, A2SEA planned to take advantage of the former’s long experience of offshore installation and its experience of operating large vessels controlled by dynamic positioning (DP). The idea was that the vessel could take four to seven jacket foundations (depending on size). The vessel would have to be self-propelled so A2SEA would not need

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to spend time preloading and jacking like some vessels.

Ultimately, A2SEA didn’t press ahead with the plan, but the comment about not needing to spend time pre-loading and jacking was interesting because DEME, whose subsidiary GeoSea has become a well known provider of installation services in the offshore wind industry, has just placed a contract for the construction of a vessel intended to handle a new generation of larger offshore wind turbines and foundations.

The vessel, Orion, will be built at Cosco in China for delivery in 2019. Although primarily intended as an installation vessel for the offshore wind industry, it will also be able to undertake decommissioning projects in the offshore oil and gas sector.

With a total installed power of 44,180 kW, Orion will be

equipped with a high-capacity Liebherr crane with lifting capacity of 3,000 tonnes at more than 50m. The crane will be able to lift loads to a height of more than 170m.

Deck space on the vessel has been maximised to provide exceptionally high transport and loading capacity. “The vessel can take the heaviest monopiles, jackets, wind turbine components and structures in a single shipment,” said DEME. “With this unmatched combination of high load and lifting capacity, Orion can transport and install the next generation of multimegawatt wind turbines.”

A DP3 vessel, Orion will be capable indeed, but perhaps the wider significance of the announcement was that, like the A2SEA vessel that didn’t quite get ordered, it isn’t a jackup. Jack-ups have long been the installation vessel of choice

in the offshore wind industry.

Numerous examples have been built, several have entered service only recently and many millions of dollars have been spent developing and building them, but DEME’s new vessel acknowledges what A2SEA knew five years ago.

Although new jack-up designs have recently been proposed, it looks more and more likely that the installation market is transitioning from jack-ups to floating assets, and DEME’s newbuild is likely to be the first – unless of course Boskalis’s conversion of one of its F-class semi-submersible heavy-lifters beats it into service. The offshore mast-type crane from Huisman for that ship is due to be delivered by the end of 2017, which means the Boskalis vessel must be due to enter service some time the following year and might just beat Orion into service. OWJ

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

48 | TURBINE SUPPORT VESSELS

Walk-to-work market provides options for those willing to go the extra mile

W

ith Clarksons Research estimating that only 35 per cent of the world fleet of 426 construction vessels is currently at work, times have never been harder for offshore vessel owners. The renewable energy market, primarily based in the North Sea, has been seen by many over the last two years as the ‘last-chance saloon’ to find work, and many have been successful.

Walk-to-work and service operation vessel (SOV) are two terms that have entered the lexicon. Like the dynamic stabilised gangways they carry, these vessels have moved from niche, specialist tools to commodity products.

Six years ago, there were only two gangway suppliers – Ampelmann, who penned the walk-to-work moniker, and OAS, which is no longer in existence – and only three vessels in the windfarm

With the market for high spec construction and remotely operated vehicle support vessels at a record low, owners are looking to opportunities elsewhere, in the renewables sector, as Philip Woodcock* explains

support market. Today, there are at least 10 gangway manufacturers either active or finalising development and at least 66 vessels that have undertaken this work role.

In general, the walk-towork market is split into short-term construction and commissioning work; shortterm inspection, maintenance and repair (IMR) campaigns; and long-term operations and maintenance (O&M). The latter is more commonly filled by

purpose-built SOVs on longterm charters, while the former are either dedicated windfarm construction support vessels or vessels of opportunity. It is the construction and IMR work that is of most interest to the beleaguered owners of construction and remotely operated vehicle (ROV) support vessels.

Generally, vessel size is not decisive, only in as much as a ship needs to have at least 40 single cabins and the ability to extend to 70 beds for client use. This of course introduces the need for SPS Code certification. As most vessels of opportunity are proven construction and ROV support vessels, charterers do not focus heavily on dynamic positioning (DP) capability or crane capacity, as these are a given in the fleet.

Having a gangway permanently mobilised is a key factor, especially in the spot

A dedicated SOV can provide a range of options from supporting CTVs to in-field communications

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

market. As in all DP markets, a proven track record of the operator, vessel and crew will always provide an advantage over a newcomer. As this is a market of low charter rate levels, low fuel consumption will help to keep the total vessel cost low and, if combined with Green Passport/Clean Design/ Comfort notations, will also have a distinct advantage.

To further distinguish themselves, operators of a walk-to-work vessel must be prepared to conduct multiple roles when in the field, over and above delivering technicians to a turbine via the gangway.

Windfarm operators have been slow to recognise the possibilities of a well utilised walk-to-work vessel properly integrated into their operations.

Although a SOV is sometimes seen as a single vessel standing alone, solving all the problems in offshore wind, it is my opinion that they work best when they are at the centre of a combined operation. On the construction of the Gemini windfarm, a variety of walk-to-work vessels were successfully used in combination with a large fleet of crew transfer vessels (CTVs).

As an example, in the winter of 2015, three CTVs remained offshore with Acta Orion for 22 days straight. This high combined utilisation resulted in significant schedule gains for the client.

A walk-to-work vessel needs to be able to support gangway operations and CTVs and act as a communications and control hub. Clear, seamless communications are

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TURBINE SUPPORT VESSELS | 49

essential in the construction and operation of offshore wind projects. A walk-to-work vessel must facilitate this both internally for the crew offshore and externally to all vessels and technicians in the field. Internally, there needs to be sufficient office space and a high capacity wireless communications system to allow all offshore workers – whether project technicians or CTV crews – to perform their administration and, in their time off, their social connection to family ashore. A WiFi connection should be available on the open decks in way of boat landings and bunker points so that, when CTVs are loitering waiting for work, their onboard computer can upload administrative information such as planned maintenance systems and email.

A walk-to-work vessel should also support an infield radio communication system, such a TETRA, by acting as a base station, to ensure that there are no blind spots between the shore base and field and within the field. In 2016, not having this capability was a common source of frustration.

At the recent European Dynamic Positioning Conference organised by Riviera Maritime Media in London in February, the opinion of the audience was that, in general, safety awareness of DP vessel operators was lower in the renewables industry than was acceptable in the offshore oil and gas industry.

The awareness of the risks from simultaneous operations (SIMOPS) and dropped objects could be seen as manifestations of this perception.

SIMOPs are a common occurrence in offshore wind and, in general, are not well managed. Often we see photographs on social media of crews on a transition piece standing under a crane load, CTVs working near installation vessel cranes or multiple CTVs

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approaching a walk-to-work vessel at the same time.

As SIMOPs have a high potential for risk, there is a need for effective coordination of all activities offshore. Traditionally, a marine co-ordination centre (MCC) is based in a dedicated control room at the main base onshore and, in some organisations, only maintains a monitoring rather than controlling brief.

As windfarms move further offshore, there is a clear need to move the MCC offshore into a dedicated space on a walk-towork vessel outfitted with the necessary communications and monitoring equipment away from the navigational bridge.

Marine control is a specialist function and should not be allowed to distract bridge officers, whose primary role is the safe navigation of a vessel. To support this, I believe that all walk-to-work vessels should maintain a dynamic 500m exclusion zone around them with strict pre-entry protocols to prevent CTVs approaching unannounced in restricted visibility during SIMOPs. The risk to personnel and equipment from dropped objects is also an area that gets less attention than in the oil and gas sector. Awareness of high profile accidents from dropped objects during the installation phase is high, but there are far too many reported and unreported lower profile incidents, which still have a high potential for serious injury. These include dropped radios and material dropped by climbers, material falling from crane lifts or out through open railings or objects breaking loose from fittings due to maintenance issues. Many of these issues can be prevented by performing a DROPS survey and using secondary retention devices such as nets, tethers or portable barriers such as those supplied to oil rigs by

The risk posed by dropped objects is significant and needs to be taken seriously

companies such as Dropsafe (www.dropsafe.com).

A CTV fleet supporting a walk-to-work vessel greatly increases the volume of work that can be completed offshore as they are more agile in the field. However, to be considered as an asset and not a liability, these vessels and their crews need to be integrated into the offshore plan and supported offshore. The most obvious needs are accommodation and fuel. Accommodation planning needs to allow sufficient beds for the CTV crew offshore so that they can remain operational 24 hours a day. CTV operations do not support crew living on their CTVs when operational offshore, so they must be accommodated on the walkto-work vessel. The operator also needs to consider means of access from a CTV so that specialist climbing training and certification is not required.

A walk-to-work vessel must be able to provide large quantities of fuel in a safe and efficient manner. It is not unreasonable for a walk-towork vessel to be expected to deliver 30,000 litres of marine gas oil a week in heavy operations. If the vessel does not have the ability to purify this volume of fuel, the walkto-work operator assumes the risk of delivering contaminated fuel, which will cause the

CTV fleet to grind to a halt.

This has occurred before, leading to significant costs in downtime, tank cleaning and engine repairs. The fuel transfer rig on a vessel needs to deliver at a high volume to reduce exposure time during bunkering operations and be equipped with offshore couplings and dry-break connections in the hose to prevent an environmental incident in case of a drift off/ drive off situation. A walk-towork vessel also needs to be prepared to support the CTV with technical support from the ship’s engineers and electricians as well as provide storage of spares. It is a good idea to assign one of the ship’s engineers to CTV support as part of the daily routine, as this will improve the operability of the CTVs and thus the overall performance of the project.

The walk-to-work market provides options for the owners to put idle construction and ROV support vessels to work.

To be successful, however, they must be prepared to support the entire project and not just transfer personnel via the gangway. Having an awareness of the risks brought about supporting CTVs, SIMOPs and via dropped objects, an owner can set his or her company apart from the pack. OWJ *Philip Woodcock, general manager, Workships Contractors

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

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BEST OF THE WEB | 51

BEST OF THE WEB Offshore wind leads the way in Europe as record new renewable capacity added As the cost of clean technology continues to fall, the world added record levels of renewable energy capacity in 2016, at an investment level 23 per cent lower than the previous year, according to research published by UN Environment, the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre and Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2017 found that wind, solar, biomass and waste-to-energy, geothermal, small hydro and marine sources added 138.5 gigawatts (GW) to global power capacity in 2016, up 8 per cent from the 127.5GW added the year before. The added generating capacity roughly equals that of the world’s 16 largest existing power-producing facilities combined.

Investment in renewables capacity was roughly double that in fossil fuel generation.

Europe enjoyed a 3 per cent increase to US$59.8 billion, led by the UK (US$24 billion) and Germany (US$13.2 billion). Offshore wind (US$25.9 billion) dominated Europe’s investment, up 53 per cent thanks to megaarrays such as the 1.2 gigawatt Hornsea project in the North Sea, estimated to cost US$5.7 billion. China also invested $4.1 billion in offshore wind, its highest figure to date. http://bit.ly/2p0u9DR

Siemens Gamesa unveils leadership team Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy has unveiled its new leadership team and has held the first meeting of its board of directors. Ignacio Martín, former executive chairman of Gamesa, will continue as chief executive officer (CEO) of the combined company for the transition phase. Mr Martín intends to retire shortly.

Andrew Hall, formerly chief financial officer (CFO) of Siemens Wind Power, has been appointed CFO of the merged company. Xabier Etxeberria, formerly business chief executive officer at Gamesa, will head its onshore business, and Markus Tacke, previously CEO of Siemens Wind

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Power, will head the united company’s offshore business. Mark Albenze, who was CEO of wind service at Siemens Wind Power, will head the combined service business. David Mesonero will be the chief integration officer in addition to his current responsibilities as head of corporate development. Rosa García, CEO for Siemens in Spain, has been appointed a non-executive chair of the board. http://bit.ly/2oEfZZl

GMS bags brace of offshore wind contracts Gulf Marine Services (GMS), which owns and operates self-propelled selfelevating support vessels (SESVs) serving the offshore oil and gas and renewable energy sectors, has been awarded two new long-term contracts in Europe to support windfarm projects for an international energy company.

The contracts saw Dong Energy select GMS to provide offshore accommodation for workers on what will be the world’s biggest offshore windfarm, Hornsea Project One. Two SESVs provided by GMS will sleep up to 150 windfarm technicians in total. They will provide safe access via a static gangway to the three offshore substations and reactive compensation station. http://bit.ly/2os0ajV

First nacelle for Merkur offshore windfarm leaves assembly line GE Renewable Energy says the first of 66 nacelles for the offshore turbines for the Merkur offshore windfarm has left its assembly line. The company also recently won a deal in China for three Haliade turbines.

The nacelle will be stored at GE’s SaintNazaire site, while new ones continue to be manufactured, and then shipped to the company’s logistics hub in Eemshaven in The Netherlands, from which the installation process will start in spring 2018. http://bit.ly/2oHLRw2

Scotland and California discuss opportunities in offshore wind A joint agreement committing the Scottish Government and the state of California to work together to tackle climate change has been signed. First minister Nicola Sturgeon met with the governor of California Ed Brown in Sacramento to discuss how the two administrations can work together to achieve the ambitions set out in the ‘Under2 MoU’ and provide a model for other governments to follow. They also discussed the importance of offshore wind in tackling climate change and considered how the two governments could share knowledge and best practice in developing this technology. http://bit.ly/2oxfdgl To view more whitepapers visit the Knowledge Bank at www.owjonline.com

www.owjonline.com/s/knowledgebank

To upload a whitepaper to the Knowledge Bank, please email Steve Edwards at steve.edwards@rivieramm.com

Editor’s selection:

Editor’s comment:

Offshore accommodation: a step-by-step guide

A well defined process to custom engineer an offshore accommodation solution is the ability to quickly capture and validate scope, determine the technical requirements, cost out the custom install and schedule the work to accommodate the client’s timeline.

A step-by-step guide for maximising TLQ project execution productivity as measured in time, cost, safety and efficiency.

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

52 | PROFILE

FORMER OIL AND GAS MAN

PLANS TRANSITION FROM TIDAL TO FLOATING WIND POWER TIM CORNELIUS IS WELL KNOWN IN THE MARINE RENEWABLE ENERGY SECTOR, LEADING ATLANTIS RESOURCES AND THE MEYGEN TIDAL PROJECT IN THE PENTLAND FIRTH – NOW HE HAS SET HIS SIGHTS ON FLOATING OFFSHORE WIND

M Tim Cornelius: “Atlantis has an exceptional project origination and development team"

r Cornelius started life in his native Australia studying marine biology but was drawn to being a diver. This led to work in the naval sphere, in submarine escape and rescue, before he became a remotely operated vehicle pilot in the offshore oil and gas industry in the North Sea. He took an MBA at Australia’s Bond University and was approached to work for Atlantis, which was looking at the tidal market.

The company that Mr Cornelius now leads, Atlantis Resources, has used the expertise of individuals it recruited from the oil and gas sector in the MeyGen tidal energy project in the UK. Now he intends to ‘repurpose’ that expertise all over again in floating offshore wind.

Early in 2017, Atlantis Resources announced that it was establishing a new division, Atlantis Energy, that will look at opportunities in floating offshore wind, subsea interconnectors, tidal barrage projects and tidal lagoon projects, along with pumped storage projects on behalf of infrastructure funds, investment banks and private developers.

“We have developed an exceptional project origination and development team at Atlantis over the past 10 years. The lessons learned and the skills developed during the progression of MeyGen and our entire tidal portfolio has a direct application in power projects that involve water, especially salt water,” Mr Cornelius said. “We are aiming to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading developers of wet renewables and to be the partner of choice for infrastructure funds seeking to invest in interconnectors, tidal

Offshore Wind Journal | 2nd Quarter 2017

barrage, pumped storage, floating offshore wind and, of course, tidal stream projects.”

Not long after the new division was formed, Atlantis signed a memorandum of understanding with Ideol, the developer of floating foundations for offshore windfarms, and said they were looking to initiate the development of a floating offshore wind project of up to 1.5 gigawatts (GW) with a pre-commercial phase of up to 100-250 megawatts (MW) commissioned by 2021.

Speaking exclusively to OWJ in early March, Mr Cornelius said the decision to move into offshore wind was part due to ‘market pull’ – that is, the growing recognition that floating offshore wind is probably the future of the offshore wind industry – and a desire to diversify. “Floating offshore wind is at a stage where it needs demonstrators,” he told OWJ. Investors are “delighted” by Atlantis Energy’s move into offshore wind, he said, where Atlantis can “sweat” its existing expertise.

Atlantis Energy isn’t only focusing on floating wind projects in the UK, however. Mr Cornelius said the company is looking at opportunities in India, Taiwan, China and, of course, France, where a tender for a commercial-scale floating offshore wind project is anticipated.

Atlantis Energy isn’t tied exclusively to using Ideol’s damping pool foundation concept, but Mr Cornelius said he likes the people at the company and the ability of the damping pool foundation to work in a range of water depths.

As to what size turbine the company might be looking to use in UK waters, Mr Cornelius said it would “definitely” be an 8MW unit, possibly a 9-10MW unit, depending on what is available.

He is also keen to work with new players from outside the northwest European market. Turbine manufacturers in China, South Korea and Japan need demonstration sites if they are to break into export markets, he noted.

Just when Atlantis Energy might develop its first floating offshore wind project is a function of the consenting process, Mr Cornelius concluded.

He noted the company is already looking at potential development sites and expects to be in a position to make an announcement shortly. OWJ

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