ersg's Industry News: Floating Wind

Let’s talk about our industry!

Welcome to our series of industry topics related to the industry we serve, Renewables, Engineering and Built environment.

This week’s spotlight is on  Kris Braakensiek , Head of Foundations Management, providing an insight into Floating Wind.

We explore this new technology and the opportunities and challenges it brings to the industry.

Floating Wind

With recent increased investments in offshore wind power, and the need for cheaper and new innovative solutions to the industry saw the development of floating offshore wind farms. The great thing about this type of project is the fact it allows the potential to access areas that were previously unavailable to the offshore wind industry.

There are four main floating foundation designs leading the market today:

• The spar buoy foundation design - this relies on gravity for stability. This design is utilised at the world’s first commercial floating wind farm, Hywind Scotland.
• A semi-submersible platform - this relies on buoyancy for stability. In 2019 a study analysing upcoming projects in the floating offshore wind market showed the majority of floating offshore wind farms favoured the installation on a semi-submersible platform. 
• The two other main designs are the tension-leg platform - this relies on a mooring system to provide stability, and a square barge to assist in the stability. This type of platform is selected as it offers developers a design that is inexpensive to build, also the platform’s design determines the depths that can be accessed in different water depths. 

Talent shortage is rife within this niche market, with clients typically opting to upskill experienced fixed-bottom foundation professionals or experienced floating professionals from the O&G market. With our case studies and experience building here, we are currently representing many professionals with engineering and installation experience on projects such as EFGL, Kincardine, and Hywind.

In the news this week:

The Pentland Project announced this week that it has selected Stiesdal's semi-submersible technology, TetraSub, as the floating foundation structure for their project. 

Find out more here: News item – Pentland Floating Offshore Windfarm (pentlandfloatingwind.com)

Floating technology has now been developed for Offshore Substations.

Find out more here: Scandinavians Develop New Scalable Floating Offshore Substation | Offshore Wind