How turbine and foundation installation strategies can be fine-tuned to deliver on the Round 3 vision.

By Andrew Williams, UK correspondent

Following the recent announcement of the successful consortia under the UK Crown Estate's Round 3, developers are gearing up to deliver an additional 25GW of electricity generating capacity from offshore wind by 2020. 

Faced with such an ambitious target, developers need to refine operations for turbine installation.

A key challenge will be to improve supply chain performance in order to overcome component sequencing and delivery challenges, preventing bottlenecks and delays. 

Other major challenges for developers include transportation, vessel and port selection issues to facilitate this unprecedented expansion in UK offshore projects.

Kaj Lindvig, CSO at A2SEA Offshore Installation, suggests that cost-effective solutions will vary by location. “The most cost-efficient solution could differ from a west coast to east coast UK project to a North Sea German project; they all have different logistics to handle,” says Lindvig.

For larger projects on the UK’s east coast, he suggests deploying bigger vessels to harbours located near the production site, where vessels could collect several turbines at a time.

He also warns against the false economy of substituting a larger, more expensive vessel for a simple barge or small vessel feeding installation cranes on-site.

“If you look at the logistics, the time is then used to unload at sea, and unloading at sea is very complicated, time consuming and cost consuming,” he explains.

Offshore wind hubs needed

Kurt Thomsen, CEO of Advanced Offshore Solutions, says there is a need to develop offshore wind hubs, where turbine components would be manufactured at a number of European ports.

He argues that economies of scale can be achieved by loading more components onto bigger vessels. In this respect, Thomsen envisages the industry will increasingly favour large, self-sustained ships.

Consequently, size and capacity considerations will necessitate assembly and perhaps even manufacture, of the components within the port facility itself.

“In the end you will have three, perhaps four, large European wind hubs,” he predicts.

Variety key to success

Andrew Smith, director of energy consultancy London Analytics, suggests that a variety of approaches at the outset wil be key to identifying the most cost effective installation strategy.

He refers to the Beatrice demonstration wind farm as an example of how constraints and new challenges triggered a variety of players to deliver innovative solutions, such as on-quay assembly of the turbines, which were floated to site, and the use of floating cranes in lieu of jack-up barges.

Smith  is confident that the Crown Estate’s decision to select nine different consortia for each of its nine zones will ensure the maximum variety of approaches.

“We'll be seeing a lot more diversity in approaches to installation as the market experiments,” he says.

Balance required

Overcoming vessel and specialized installation equipment shortages in order to reduce the stresses of offshore turbine installation will also be a key challenge.

Smith warns that long-term government commitment and regulatory certainty is crucial if overall momentum is to be sustained.

“Those assurances will lead to finance being channelled into expanding the supply-chain within Britain.  Without those assurances, Britain will be forced to continue to buy in services as it needs them, resulting in delays, unnecessary expense, and exported jobs,” says Smith.

With reference to port facilities and vessels, Marc Mühlenbach, analyst at Emerging Energy Research, says the recent surge in construction and build-out will be key for overcoming capacity shortfalls.

However, he cautions developers to ensure that a sustained period of innovation and construction does not tip the current state of undersupply into one of overcapacity. 

“The crucial thing to consider in the long-term is the danger of a booming capacity build-out for what will eventually become a curbed growth in terms of installations,” he says.

Providing an alternative angle, Lindvig argues that the crucial criteria on which to judge each approach will be cost savings and time.

“You must always look at the cost and the time.  It is not always the cheapest or the lowest cost solution but it is also the most efficient solution,” he said.

Thomsen similarly highlights the central importance of managing expenditure. “The biggest threat to an offshore project is really the fact that you overspend, because it’s going to take you years and years and years to earn that money back.”

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