Notice

Floating Offshore Wind Demonstration Programme: details of successful projects

Published 25 January 2022

The Floating Offshore Wind (FOW) Demonstration Programme is now closed.

BEIS awarded £31.6 million in grant funding for demonstration of innovative floating offshore wind technologies. Eleven projects were funded, covering 4 challenge areas:

1. Dynamic cables
2. Anchorings and moorings
3. Floaters and foundations
4. Industry defined innovation (other technology, not 1, 2 or 3)
5. Integrated demonstration of multiple technologies

Projects will demonstrate an innovative technology in the hope of reducing costs and increasing the rate of deployment of floating offshore wind turbines.

The following programmes were funded.

Dynamic cables

Accelerated development of Higher-voltage Export & Array cables for Dynamic applications (AHEAD)

Led by JDR Cable Systems Ltd
NZIP Grant: £1,606,711

No dynamic cable rated above 66kV has ever been deployed in an offshore wind environment. Due to increased turbine sizes, distances from shore, and water depths, in the 2020s the industry will require significantly higher voltage dynamic cables. This project aims to demonstrate the following technologies:

1. Demonstration of innovative polymer insulation systems to be capable of operation above 66 kV and to 132 kV, potentially as a wet-design.
2. Extension of Dynamic Array cable construction to larger and heavily Dynamic Export cables at 132 kV
3. Advanced dynamic cable modelling to engineer cable configurations with higher loadings or stiffer cabling.
4. Integration of next generation optical fibre strain sensing technology into Dynamic HV Export and Array cables to improve offshore cable monitoring and maintenance.

Visit the JDR website for more information.

Anchorings and moorings

Disconnectable Buoy Mooring System for Floating Offshore Wind

Led by London Marine Consultants Ltd
NZIP Grant: £264,924

The Disconnectable Buoy Mooring System enables the mooring and power cable to be installed with reduced risk of damage to all components and with reduced schedule, thereby reducing the duration of the installation campaign, the project costs, cost of energy and vessel emissions.

Visit the London Marine website for more information.

JAVELIN Deep Set Tensile Anchor Demonstration Project

Led by Reflex Marine Ltd
NZIP Grant: £882,283

JAVELIN adapts established offshore drilling techniques to provide a highly efficient anchoring system. The anchor’s cone-shaped profile creates hoop stresses in the surrounding media and substrate when the anchor is tensioned creating a powerful ‘friction lock’ deep in the borehole. JAVELIN is set in a pre-drilled small diameter borehole at significant depth, penetrating high strength geological formations. The JAVELIN design is highly flexible as changes in borehole depth or diameter can easily accommodate local geological variations. The design is also ideal for resisting high angle loading, required for taut-leg mooring solutions. The anchor has a small footprint and low impact upon installation.

Visit the Reflex Marine website for more information.

Floaters and foundations

Articulated Wind Column Performance Demonstration Project

Led by AWC Technology Ltd
NZIP Grant: £760,874

The Articulated Wind Column is a buoyant column connected via an articulation to a gravity base anchor which maintains the turbine’s position on the seabed. The structure achieves stability against environmental loads through the buoyant column creating a righting moment around the single anchor point. The single gravity based anchor allows for a single articulation connection between the column and anchor thus allowing zero structural resistance to overturning.

Visit the AWC website for more information.

Deployment of Buoyant Production Technologies’ Spar Buoy hull-form for floating offshore wind

Led by Buoyant Production Technologies Ltd
NZIP Grant: £238,724

BPT has developed a spar-buoy hull design, specifically configured to deliver minimal motions whilst supporting large payloads in the offshore environment. The design is a slender single-column floating facility comprising an upper slender cylinder, and a lower, fully-submerged cylinder which employs passive ballast to deliver stability and motions performance.

The design is scale-able for different applications and engineering analyses indicate that the motions performance of the design is comparable to a full-scale Spar hull form similar to those employed on an existing demonstration project. BPT has worked with Siemens Energy and Subsea7 to develop a floating substation design using the Spar-Buoy technology and it is this design which will be the subject of the current project.

Visit the Buoyant Production Technologies website for more information.

Integrated demonstration

Fabrication and Deployment of Trivane Demonstrator

Led by Trivane Ltd
NZIP Grant: £ 3,268,058

Trivane is a trimaran comprising 3 barges, each of simple construction and hence low cost. They are connected to one another by box beams and braces. A standard wind turbine nacelle, blades and tower are mounted near to the stern of the centre barge. Trivane weathervanes about a turret mooring system at the bow. Fabrication will take place at Ledwood Mechanical Engineering, Pembroke Dock. The simple form of construction of the 3 barges means they can be built almost anywhere at a low cost per tonne because the hulls are an assembly of stiffened steel plates.

Visit the Trivane Ltd website for more information.

Integrated Floating Offshore Wind Demonstrator (INFLOAT)

Led by Copenhagen Offshore Partners
NZIP Grant: £9,656,980

The Integrated Floating Offshore Wind Demonstrator project (INFLOAT) plans to develop and demonstrate a set of innovative UK technologies addressing all competition technology challenges. The demonstrations will be integrated with the Pentland Demo project where a 15-18MW class floating platform based on the TetraSub design by Stiesdal Offshore Technologies will be deployed at a site in northern Scotland in 2023. The project’s overarching objective is to accelerate the roll-out of large scale FOW by driving down LCOE whilst growing the UK supply chain’s capability and capacity to deliver.

The innovations to be developed and demonstrated are:

A: novel UK-manufactured mooring system with doubling in nylon mooring line capacity, unlocking shallow-water floating and reducing footprint and costs, enabling co-existence with other sea users.

B: novel UK-manufactured large-scale dynamic cable protection and ancillaries enabling next generation floating WTGs and cost reduction through design optimisation.

C: novel UK floater assembly methodology with modular industrialised components using novel UK manufactured jointing solution. Barge-assembly increasing flexibility to use UK ports.

D: a digital twin and advanced monitoring system and first-of-a-kind digital twin using UK-developed digital technology.

Visit the Pentland Demo website for more information.

Subsea Substation to FOW Interface assembly demonstrator

Led by Aker Solutions Ltd
NZIP Grant: £690,454

This project seeks to integrate dynamic inter-array cables manufactured using Aker Solutions’ Oscilay™ cable manufacturing technique with subsea substations capable of reducing LCOE by 20% compared to traditional topside substations. Oscilay™ cables have greater machine simplicity and require fewer splices and welds, as well as offering simpler and cheaper offshore installation. Combined with subsea substations, this has the potential to significantly increase the efficiency of energy transmission back to shore.

Design, install and test a SENSE equipped wind turbine on a TLP floating foundation

Led by SENSE Wind Ltd
NZIP Grant: £10,000,000

This project’s overarching innovation is the combination of 2 technologies, the PelaStar Tension Leg Platform (TLP) floating foundation and the SENSE wind turbine installation system. Adding to this are 2 additional innovations associated with the TLP: high vertical load anchors and synthetic mooring tendons. Improvements in grid cable support and protection will also be investigated.

These innovations come together in an integrated, engineered, floating offshore wind solution, that aims to demonstrate that the SENSE equipped TLP solution will be cheaper to deploy and maintain at most deep water offshore sites compared to spar, semi-submersible and barge solutions. A TLP foundation will typically use 20% less hull steel and 80% less mooring line material than these competing concepts for the same turbine rating, sea conditions and water depth, and will have the smallest seabed footprint for its anchoring arrangement.

Visit the Sense Wind website for more information.

MW scale demonstration of MPS low cost floating foundation system for FOW

Led by Marine Power Systems Ltd
NZIP Grant: £3,466,083

The far offshore, deep water environment in which many FOW projects will be constructed has an abundance of wave energy – a resource that can substantially improve the power output and consistency of a FOW project whilst simultaneously reducing LCoE. Current front running FOW platforms do not have the capability for the integration of wave energy in the future. This project will capitalise on previous work by MPS to demonstrate a 2MW scale FOW platform that also simultaneously harnesses 0.5MW of wave energy. The project will demonstrate all aspects of an innovative FOW platform including: main structure, dynamic cable, moorings, anchors & tensioning/deployment system.

Visit the Marine Power Systems website for more information.

UKCS Floating Wind Accelerator

Led by Cerulean Winds Ltd
NZIP Grant: £825,692

This is a demonstration project taking an oil and gas sector approach to large scale floating infrastructure to demonstrate an integrated dynamic system consisting of a mooring system, floating foundation and wind turbine. The project intends to address innovation and optimisation of all aspects of floating wind farm design and installation basis of design at 3 x 1GW floating wind farms at sites on the UK Continental Shelf.

For more information, visit the Cerulean Winds website.