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a decision was recently taken to decom- this year, BW Ideol (having had BW low-draft ? oating platforms. BW Ideol mission the structure – a sort of spar – Offshore as a shareholder since Febru- said this collaboration follows the Op- over the pro? tability of running it and ary 2021) said it was working with Hi- ti? ot project, which had now completed. the three demonstration turbines it col- tachi ABB Power Grids on “scalable ABB wasn’t able to provide an update. lected power from. ? oating substations”, using Ideol’s shal- Earlier this year, construction engi-

Others are looking at ? oating con- cepts, too, such as Newfoundland and

Labrador, where there’s been a study into these types of structure for offshore wind. Meanwhile, subsea substations are also being proposed, including for the current ScotWind ? oating offshore wind round. Some of those working on concepts are building on their experi- ence from the oil and gas industry where transformers, seabed and topsides, have been developed and delivered for the oil and gas industry for some time.

Kenneth Simonsen, SVP for Offshore

Wind, at Aker Solutions says its ? oat- ing substation design is focused on serv- ing wind farms ranging from 250MW to 1.3GW and 220KV, and is based on the standardized building blocks it’s de- veloped and proven in oil and gas. “The simple hull is based on our design for the Blind Faith (Aker Kværner designed semisubmersible production) platform that has been in operation for over a de- cade (in the US Gulf of Mexico), and the

Njord platform (semisubmersible, built at Kværner Stord and installed in 1997), which we’ve used as a reference for the ? at top deck, has been operating for 20 years,” he says, with HV electrical equipment from an original equipment manufacturer whose systems have been proven in an operating environment.

The design will likely be fairly similar, but may, for example, require more en- closures in the North Sea, compared to more temperate locations like the Medi- terranean or western US.

In 2018, power and automation group

ABB said it had joined French ? oat- ing wind foundation designer Ideol and

STX Europe Offshore Energy to devel- op a ? oating substation design. The idea was being developed under a research and development project called Opti? ot, which also involved French industrial process ? rm SNEF, and was based on

Ideol’s damping pool concept. In June www.marinetechnologynews.com 13

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