VESSEL REPORT Offshore Wind Vessels Headwinds

Vessel construction lags behind U.S. offshore wind plans.

By Kirk Moore, Contributing Editor

The Biden administration’s headlong plunge into offshore wind energy has yet to be matched by private investment in new vessels. Advocates for the new U.S. industry now see it as a serious bottleneck and are working with industry and government to lower barriers.

“The U.S. offshore wind industry hovers right on the verge of a period of major growth, but without enough vessels to install, operate, and maintain the [offshore wind] farms, the market will never reach its true potential,” wrote John Begala, vice president for federal and state policy with the Business Network for Offshore Wind, in a commentary leading up to the Network’s International Partnering Forum in Baltimore in late March.

The network’s new “vessel working group” met for the rst time there. With 16 offshore wind leases in the Atlantic and an estimated $9.8 billion in new investments planned in ports and other infrastructure, industry boosters are worried about the pace of new vessel construction.

Wind turbine installation vessels (WTIVs) are the big nut for the U.S. industry to crack, at around $500 million each to build and facing a worldwide shortage amid mounting demand in Europe and Asia.

Dominion Energy’s WTIV Charybdis, the rst U.S.- ag installation vessel, is on track for delivery in late 2023, with contracts to work off southern New England along with Dominion’s own Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project.

Meanwhile Maersk Supply Service has its WTIV under construction at SembCorp Marine Ltd., in Singapore, with delivery planned in 2025. Maersk is partnering with Kirby Offshore Wind for Jones Act-compliant delivery of turbine components at sea for construction of the Empire Wind and Beacon Wind arrays off New York.

Still, federal energy planners and industry observers say the U.S. industry will need ve WTIVs. The so-called feeder model planned for the New York projects and Vineyard Wind off Massachusetts will use foreign- ag WTIVs and U.S. tugs and barges to move material. But the global crunch for WTIV services is sure to drive up rates, stressing wind developers already hit with higher costs.

In February Bleutec Industries Offshore Wind Services LLC, Houston, received approval in principle (AiP) from the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) for the designs of its

Jones Act-compliant Binary Marine Installation Solution (BMIS). The company calls its system “a cost-effective alternative to the more expensive heavy lift jackup wind turbine installation vessels currently being employed by the offshore wind sector for foundation and turbine installation.”

Bleutec’s BMIS includes a pile installation vessel (PIV), a wind turbine installation vessel light (WTIVL), and service operations vessels (SOVs), all tailored to the Jones Act market, with modular con guration to facilitate construction in U.S. shipyards.

Bleutec said those vessels “will be capable of installing turbines up to 22 megawatt capacity and monopiles of up to 4,500 tons with 15-meter diameters at any of the U.S. offshore wind developments.”

“Along with our strategic partners, we hope to transform the offshore wind industry through our BMIS with the mission of becoming the premier provider of Jones Act transportation and installation for this market,” said Bleutec president and CEO Robin Bodtmann.

SOVs

The other vital component of SOVs, providing support and hotel facilities to technicians at sea, is thought to require 13 ships for the planned U.S. industry, with just a half-dozen planned as yet.

Early out of the gate was Empire Offshore Wind, a joint venture

Offshore Wind Vessels

charter with Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, in its operations on the Dominion Energy Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project off the coast of Virginia.

The HAV 832, designed by HAV Design AS, a leading SOV design rm in Norway, will be built by Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding (FBS) at its shipyard in Sturgeon Bay, Wis., and go into service in 2026.

Crowley will manage and crew the SOV to support Siemens Gamesa’s service operations off Virginia. Planned for 176 turbines, the project will have a nameplate power output up to 2.6 gigawatts.

between Equinor and BP, when in May 2022 it announced a long-term SOV contract with Edison Chouest Offshore (ECO).

The vessel will be a “plug-in hybrid SOV,” and rst in the U.S. offshore wind sector that can operate partly on battery power, according to the partnership. To be homeported at the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal in New York City, the vessel will accommodate up to 60 technicians to operate and maintain the Empire Wind 1 and Empire Wind 2 turbine arrays to be built off the New York Harbor approaches.

In January 2023 Crowley and Danish offshore maritime company ESVAGT announced new details on their plans to jointly build and operate a 288.7'×57.7'×20.3' SOV for a long-term

ESVAGT is one of the largest operators of SOVs in Europe, with 40 vessels and 1,200 employees. It will support Crowley with design, construction, crew training and operation services as part of the two companies’ joint venture, Crest Wind, formed in 2021.

“We have designed and developed numerous SOVs for use in demanding offshore climates, but this is the rst time we are designing a vessel for the U.S. market,” Gisle Vinjevoll Thrane, vice president of sales at HAV Design, said in a statement. “We are con dent in the operational bene ts our vessel design brings to the table, so we believe that this contract can open the door for further work in the USA.”

Alongside a crew of 20, it will accommodate up to 60 technicians. The SOV is designed for comfort and high

VESSEL REPORT Offshore Wind Vessels

workability, providing a highly ef cient workspace and safe transfer of technicians at the windfarm via a motioncompensated walk-to-work gangway and transfer boats.

Other Vessels

About 20 offshore wind crew transfer vessels (CTVs) are in the U.S. pipeline, with up to 58 boats anticipated by 2030.

Other needs are specialized survey vessels, like the 73' R/V Shackleford recently delivered by All American Marine, Bellingham, Wash., to Geodynamics, Newport, N.C.

The Shackleford, developed by Teknicraft Design in New Zealand, is a semi-displacement aluminum catamaran hull. The vessel will serve an integral role in Geodynamics’ mission of providing turnkey “single pass” offshore surveys and is speci cally customized to serve the U.S. East Coast offshore wind sector.

European and United Kingdom offshore wind operators and vessel designers have profoundly in uenced builders of the budding U.S. CTV eet. Future prospects for wind power expanding to deepwater sites in the Gulf of Maine and off the West Coast are still far off. But European designers are already drawing up lines for oating wind turbine installation vessels.

“There are expected to be thousands of oating turbine installations in the coming years, including 1,800 in 2030,” according to Wijtze van der Leij, Damen Shipyard Group’s sales manager for offshore wind.