Milestone Hit at First "Float and Submerge" Offshore Windfarm

Written by Martin Lynch, European News Editor for Industrial Info (Galway, Ireland)--The world's first "float and submerge" offshore wind turbine foundation has made its way up the River Tyne in England for the Blyth Offshore Wind Demonstration Project.

The concrete gravity-based foundations (GBFs) form part of the project and are being installed using a new "float and submerge" method--a construction technique more common in the oil and gas sector. They will, if successful, help further reduce the costs of deploying offshore windfarms. Built by the Royal BAM Group (BAMNB:EN) (Bunnik, Netherlands), each GBF consists of more than 1,800 cubic metres of concrete and weighs more than 15,000 tonnes when fully installed on the seabed. Each foundation is floated into position and then filled with water to be sunk onto a prepared gravel bed on the sea floor. They stand 60 metres tall to the access platform and will be sunk in waters up to 40 metres deep around 5.7 kilometres off the northeast coast of England.

The first phase will have a generating capacity of 41.5 megawatts (MW) and will be capable of powering up to 33,000 homes when it goes live in 2018. It will use five of the world's largest turbines, the V164-8.0 models rated at 8.3-MW each from MHI Vestas Wind Systems A/S (OMX:VWS) (Aarhus, Denmark). A second phase will follow with the installation of up to 60 MW of generating capacity using different turbines, the model which is yet to be decided.

Once the GBFs are placed over the summer, specialist contractor VBMS GmbH (Wilhelmshaven, Germany) will start laying the inter array cables that will connect the individual wind turbines. The project is owned by EDF Energies Nouvelles (Paris, France) but will be built by EDF Energy Renewables, a 50-50 U.K. joint venture between EDF Energies Nouvelles and EDF Energy.

"This is the first major offshore operation on this project, and over the coming months people will be able to see the windfarm being built out at sea," said EDF ER Chief Executive Matthieu Hue. "This groundbreaking scheme will benefit the North East of England and help the U.K. to meet its future low-carbon electricity needs. This is the first time that this float and submerge method has been used on a windfarm project. The GBFs are held in place by gravity, and this unique design reduces the need to use expensive marine equipment for the installation on the sea bed."

The developments at Blyth come just weeks after Industrial Info reported on the first turbines for the pioneering Hywind Scotland floating offshore windfarm being installed on their floating foundations at the Stord deep fjord in Norway. Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy (Zamudio, Spain) confirmed that the five 6-MW turbines for the 30-MW project will now be towed across the North Sea to Scottish waters. For additional information, see July 6, 2017, article - Norway Floating First Offshore Turbines to Scotland.

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