DEVELOPMENTS IN FOUNDATION TECHNOLOGY
Deeper waters and novel solutions
in mind. It is not enough to produce elegant designs that are very efficient in use of steel, nor ones that are cheap to install. They also need to be easy and cheap to manufacture in large numbers. The winning jackets will be those that can
been used in a small number of locations around the UK and European waters.
These jacket foundations have been used by the offshore oil and gas industry for many years and involve the fabrication of many welded node joints between the tubular elements that make up the lattice. To date, both in the oil and gas industry and in the offshore wind industry, these complex joints have been primarily constructed by manual welding methods and are therefore a long and costly process. If such structures are to be used in large numbers in the offshore wind industry then such manual fabrication methods cannot prevail, neither in term of cost nor that of capacity. There simply aren’t enough large fabrication facilities in Europe to meet the demand for jackets using traditional fabrication methods. Nor is the wind industry able to pay for such expensive production methods.
MASS PRODUCTION
What is needed in the industry is a move away from the ‘artisan’ approach of ‘bespoke designed’ and ‘hand crafted’ jacket to a much more ‘industrialised’ and ‘mass production’ attitude.
This ‘industrialisation’ must start with the design of the jacket. They have to be designed with ‘low cost’ production
hit the ‘sweet spot’ between design, manufacture and installation.
‘standard’ fit up jigs and tooling can be used to ensure that the lengthy process of jacket assembly can be substantially reduced. In the ‘standard methods’ of fabrication it is common for set up to take 80% of the total fabrication time. This cannot be tolerated in a fully ‘industrialised’ process.
Furthermore if we are to introduce robotic or automated welding and handling techniques then we have another driver for standardised designs so the welding and handling equipment does not have be set up differently for each jacket produced.
Standard designs will also have additional advantages when it comes to transportation and installation. Sea transport grillages can be kept the same. Handling rigs can be identical. All these peripheral items can add substantial costs to an offshore wind project.
SUMMARY
The basics of mass production have been used in other industries for years. We just need to learn the lesson and adapt them so that we can apply them to reduce the cost of jackets for the offshore wind industry. To reduce the Levelised Cost of Energy to acceptable levels we need to attack the cost of wind projects at all levels.
The Target must be to hit the ‘Sweet Spot’
In order for jackets to be mass manufactured they must be ‘predominantly’ the same. This is despite the water depth and geotechnical conditions for each wind turbine being unique. It is therefore necessary to consider a jacket design where, say 80% of the jacket is identical for a given wind turbine. In this case many of the component members of the jacket can be the same and production cells can be set up to cheaply and rapidly manufacture these common parts. Similarly if the geometry of the jackets is common, then
There is unlikely to be a single ‘silver bullet’ that is going to save the day – much more likely that we will achieve our target by ‘a thousand cuts.’
Graham Kennedy OGN Aquind
www.ogn-group.com Click to view more info
www.windenergynetwork.co.uk
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