The Anonymous Widower

OWLC Selling Rights To Gravity Tripod Offshore Wind Foundation

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.

This is the sub-heading.

The rights to the gravity tripod offshore wind foundation developed by the UK company Offshore Wind Logistics and Construction (OWLC) have been put up for sale following an appointment of administrators who initiated an accelerated sale of the business.

These two paragraphs give full details.

OWLC says its gravity tripod foundation can deliver a solution to the offshore wind industry that is quicker, cheaper and more environmentally friendly than monopiles or jackets.

The foundation, which uses concrete instead of steel, is said to reduce levelised cost of energy (LCOE) between 11 and 12 per cent, according to information on OWLC’s website, which cites BVG Associate’s study from 2020 that also found the gravity tripod to be 51 per cent cheaper than a jacket substructure and 36 per cent cheaper than a monopile to install.

The home page of the OWLC web site gives full details of their Gravity Tripod.

This is the company’s outline description of the foundation.

The Gravity Tripod™, globally patented, is an offshore subsea foundation structure designed to deliver up to 11.7% project cost reduction, to reduce project delivery times by up to 1/3 and create almost zero environmental impact.

The Gravity Tripod™ is a component base structure that benefits from the best aspects of other foundation concepts. It is a hydro-dynamic transparent structure which doesn’t require piling, is manufactured from low-cost tubular sections in a rapid assembly process and is installed with minimal seabed intervention.

The Gravity Tripod™ has two distinctive components that act together to ensure the structure has an extremely long design life (up to 100+ years) and is insensitive to turbine loads with a capacity of up to 25MWs. In addition, the structure has a low bearing pressure on the seabed and so is capable of accommodation a huge range of sediment types, with less seabed preparation required than other gravity-based designs.

Other points include.

  • A design life of 100 + years.
  • Biodiversity net gain.
  • Sheaper to install.
  • Designed for water depths of 20-75 metres.
  • Easier to install
  • No piling.
  • Noiseless construction.
  • Reduced embedded carbon

I like it and I hope someone buys it and turns it into a success.

March 11, 2024 Posted by | Design, Energy | , | Leave a comment