Page 43: of Marine News Magazine (August 2020)

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one hundred “In the U.S. offshore wind farm market, the operators are preparing for the possibility of building type-speci? c SOVs that can accommodate the usually land- based wind turbine technicians while conducting the maintenance of the offshore wind farms.” – Blake Jackson, a U.S.- based sales manager for

Wärtsilä Marine Business

Credit: Wärtsilä sels have an elevated requirement for crew comfort, station keeping, and roll reduction,” and talked about their need to be “highly integrated with self-compensating gangways interfaced into the dynamic positioning and alarm and monitoring systems for safe walk to workability.”

Decisions to build long-lived assets require forward thinking on vessels’ energy consumption unnecessary pre- viously. Another Wärtsilä executive, Arthur Boogaard, general manager, Business Sales, Wärtsilä Marine Business, pointed to the development of hydrogen fuels, hybrid bat- teries and other fuel sources that might propel SOVs work- ing offshore. He said, “We’re already preparing customers for these fuels, and customers are responding by planning their vessels [for this] future accordingly.”

Aqueos Corporation

Looking further down the coast, as development shifts into the mid-Atlantic states, a name less familiar to read- ers is worth mentioning. Aqueos Corporation, with an of- ? ce in southern Louisiana where it is well known for subsea work in the oil and construction sectors, completed a diving contract for support of the Coastal Virginia Offshore Wind project. While this project (to be operational by late 2020) is starting small, with two Siemens turbines of 6 MW each, the participation of Aqueos provides a tangible example of offshore oil expertise transitioning to offshore wind. Indeed, in its announcement of its work offshore Virginia, a com- pany executive explained, “We capitalized on our years of experience in the oil? elds of the Gulf of Mexico.” 43 www.marinelink.com MN