Entrion Wind Wins ScotWind Feasibility Deal For Its 100-Metre Depth Foundation Tech
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.
This is the sub-heading.
Entrion Wind has been awarded a project to evaluate the feasibility of its patent-pending fully restrained platform (FRP) offshore wind foundation technology by a Scotwind developer.
Having worked on similar structures for reusable oil platforms in the 1970s, I reckon these FRP monopoles can be made to work.
The structures, I mathematically-modelled were for a company called Balaena Structures, that had been started by two Cambridge University engineering professors. The structures were about a hundred metres high and perhaps thirty metres in diameter.
They would have been built horizontally in the sort of dock, where you would build a supertanker and would have been floated into position horizontally. Water would then be let in to the cylinder and they would turn to the vertical. I From that position, they would be lowered to the sea-bed by adjusting the water in the cylinder. They had a method of holding the Balaena to the seabed, which relied mainly on the weight of the structure.
Sadly, they never sold any platforms and the company folded.
Until recently, you could find the expired patents on the Internet.
There’s more on Entrion Wind’s technology on this page on their web site.
The Anonymous Widower 
I do find it extraordinary the designs needed here to manage the overturning moment of 500T of nacelle sitting 150-200m off sea level to then add 100m down to the seabed makes from interesting calculations and simulations to make sure its going to work.
Comment by Nicholas Lewis | February 25, 2023 |
The Balaena would have mounted all the gubbins needed to get the gas into a pipeline to the shore on top of a hundred metre tall thirty metre diameter steel cylinder. Those calculations were done by the two Cambridge professors. I did the dynamics of installation mainly. The cylinder doubled as a storage tank.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Entrion put an electrolyser and hydrogen tanks in the monopile in the future.
Comment by AnonW | February 25, 2023 |