Aker Solutions, Cognite secure digital offshore wind energy technology grant
Aker Solutions and Cognite have been awarded a $2-million grant from the California Energy Commission (CEC) for a project called NextWind Real Time Condition Monitoring.
The project is focused on next generation solutions in wind through digitalization and aims to develop a holistic digital solution that will enable monitoring the condition of an offshore floating wind farm and its impact on the environment via live data streaming.
Aker Solutions, partnering with Cognite, was selected for the grant award as part of the California Energy Commission’s Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC). The program provides grants for companies applying research and projects designed to help develop next-generation wind energy technologies. The projects must include objectives that increase the competitiveness, performance, and reliability of wind generation while reducing costs and effects on the environment and wildlife.
A digital twin model of physical offshore wind assets will be developed to assess conditions and integrity management. This real-time information will allow access and analysis of data to help reduce operating expenses and maintenance costs by improving production efficiencies. Making this data available to a wide range of users will allow for additional understanding of environmental and wildlife impacts to help reduce mitigation.
In April 2018, the Redwood Coast Energy Authority selected a consortium which includes Aker Solutions, Principle Power and EDPR Offshore to enter into a public-private partnership to pursue the development of the proposed Redwood Coast Offshore Wind Project. The 100-150 megawatt floating offshore wind farm is planned to be located more than 30 km off the coast of Humboldt Bay, and is expected online in the mid-2020s. The team intends to use this project as a case study for the new initiative due to its relevance.
Subsea 7 wins contract offshore Germany
Subsea 7 has announced the award of a sizeable contract by innogy Kaskasi GmbH for the Kaskasi offshore wind farm project, located about 35 km northwest of Heligoland in the German sector of the North Sea.
The contracted work scope includes the transport and installation of the offshore substation foundation, 38 wind turbine monopile foundations and 52 km of inner array grid cables in water depths of between 18 and 25 m. Offshore installation is scheduled for execution in 2021 and 2022 using Seaway 7’s heavy lift, cable lay and support vessels. When completed, the Kaskasi offshore wind farm will have an installed capacity of 342 MW.
CAPE Holland to supply Vibro Lifting Tool
CAPE Holland has been awarded a contract by Seaway 7 to supply a Vibro Lifting Tool for the installation of the monopile foundations for the Kaskasi offshore wind farm.
This will be the first offshore wind project whereby the monopiles will be driven to final penetration with a vibro hammer only, says CAPE Holland.
Seaway 7 first used the CAPE vibro equipment in 2012 to drive the monopiles for the Riffgat project to stabile depth. Since then they used the vibro equipment on a number of oil and gas projects and last year also on an offshore wind farm project in Taiwan.
The Vibro Lifting Tool for this project will have multiple vibro hammers linked together to provide a total of 1920 kgm. A specially developed clamping system will be used to create the interface between the Vibro Lifting Tool and the flanged top of the monopiles.
Pulse wins offshore Taiwan wind farm contract
Ørsted has contracted Pulse Structural Monitoring, an Acteon company, to provide digital structural monitoring and insight services and equipment for the Greater Changhua wind farm offshore Taiwan.
The company will design, fabricate, install, and commission its monitoring instrumentation on three wind turbine foundations. It will supply its NX2 digital platform to acquire a range of high-quality measurements that include bending and torsional strain, inclination, displacement and acceleration in key components of the jacket legs, nodes and wind turbine generator towers.
This Acteon integrated solution will also include corrosion and anode monitoring equipment. •
