Offshore staff
CAMBORNE, UK – Large Diameter Drilling (LDD) will supply grouting services to DEME Offshore to support the placement of foundations at the Saint-Nazaire wind farm offshore the Guérande Peninsula, France.
According to LDD, this will be the world’s first wind farm to use drilled XL-monopile foundations, which will support 80 GE Haliade 150-6MW wind turbines.
LDD will provide personnel and services for grouting the drilled monopiles in position and the transition pieces to the monopile connections.
The scope involves grouting monopiles into drilled rock sockets using a high-strength grout, followed by grouting the transition pieces to the monopiles with an ultra-high-strength grout.
To support operations, LDD has developed special grout mixing and pumping equipment to supply mixed grout to the drilled rock sockets at a rate of 100 cu m/hr (3,531 cu ft/hr). This equipment will primarily use bulk grout delivered from large material silos, which are also being fabricated for the project.
Peter McElligott, business development engineer at the company, said: “The new equipment can mix and pump bulk-supplied and bag-supplied grout.
“Traditionally, different types of equipment would be required to do both scopes, but, in this case, we can do both with the same equipment, which will optimize operations. Furthermore, the output of 100 cu m/hr reduces the vessel time required to complete the foundations.”
LDD’s previous work for DEME Offshore includes the Belgian SeaMade offshore wind farm grouting project in 2019.
The company was merged last year with Core Grouting to form part of Acteon’s foundations and cables business segment.
05/13/2021
