Page 51: of Marine Technology Magazine (September 2022)

Tech Talk: The UMACK Anchor

Marc/Adobestock

CorPower Ocean, Maersk Supply

Service and Dieseko have installed the ? rst commercial-scale UMACK anchor to support the HiWave-5 demonstration project. The anchor has been installed 4km off the coast of Aguçadoura, in northern Portu- gal, where it will be used to anchor the CorPower C4 Wave Energy

Converter, as part of the HiWave-5 project.

The UMACK technology is de- signed to provide a step-change im- provement to the vertical holding capacity of pile-type anchors, tout- ing reductions to cost and carbon footprints compared to both mono- piles and gravity foundations.

“We installed the pile using a 500MU vibro-hammer supplied by Dieseko, supported by a heave- compensated crane on the Maersk

Achiever vessel,” said CorPower

Ocean Senior Engineer Ian Denton. “The installation method works by vibrating the anchor into the sea bed, offering a high speed, low- noise solution which minimizes im- pact on the marine environment.”

The UMACK anchor installed is 24m long, 1.6m diameter and weighs 43 tons, with an ultimate tensile capacity in excess of 15MN.

The Aguçadoura site will initially accommodate a single CorPower

C4 WEC device, which later form part of a larger four-system array, and one of the world’s ? rst grid- connected wave farms. The Hi-

Wave-5 Project ultimately aims to introduce certi? ed and warrantied

WEC products to the market. The

Hiwave-5 project is funded by the

Swedish Energy Agency and Por- tugal 2020 through AICEP Global and CCDR-N.

www.marinetechnologynews.com 51

MTR #7 (50-65).indd 51 10/3/2022 10:00:08 AM