Deepest Ever Fixed-Bottom Wind Turbine Foundation Stands Offshore Scotland
The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.
This is the sub-heading.
The world’s deepest fixed-bottom wind turbine foundation has been installed at what will be Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm – Seagreen – off the coast of Angus.
This is the first paragraph.
On Friday, 7 April, the jacket foundation was transported to the project site on a barge operated by the main contractor, Seaway 7, where it was met by the Saipem 7000 – the semisubmersible crane vessel which is used to lift each of the 2,000-tonne turbine foundations into place.
It is obviously, a very worthwhile engineering achievement.
But two thousand tonnes of steel and a giant crane to lift it into place seems a bit of an overkill to me.
I believe that there must be a better method.
I feel that Entrion Wind’s idea of a FRP monopole, which I talked about in Entrion Wind Wins ScotWind Feasibility Deal For Its 100-Metre Depth Foundation Tech, could be a better bet.
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. 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 and what they called the gum-boot principle.
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 