Page 26: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Sep/Oct 2022)

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FEATURE VESSELS it’s a similar target in France, Norway, Poland, most of the MW turbines being installed today. “But we’re heading for

Baltic states and Spain. Then you move around to South- 15, and we know we’re going to get to 20 MW,” Bryce east Asia and into the States. There are not enough vessels. said. “When we started, the foundations were 500 tons

It’s as simple as that.” and they went to 1,000 tons. And now, a really big founda-

According to Bryce, the global feet of vessels ca- tion, a big tube on a monopile, which supports the latest pable of installing the foundations for today’s 10- and generation of offshore wind turbines, can be 3,000 tons. 12-megawatt (MW) turbines consists of eight vessels, We are heading for 4,000 or 5,000 tons.” only four of which were purpose-built. But that’s not “Here comes your perfect storm. We’re about to have the “real issue” he said. “We’ve got a very limited supply an exponential increase in offshore wind park activity. At now, but going forward, a lot of that supply won’t be ft the same time, individual turbines have increased in size for the purpose.” because of design and economics, and there are no vessels,”

While a greater number of projects will require even Bryce said.

more vessels to install their foundations, the bigger prob- Zero-C is working to bring to market of a vessel of its lem is that the vessels presently available won’t be able to own to help tackle this challenge. It has been working with handle the larger foundations of the future as turbines con- Ulstein Design & Solutions BV in the Netherlands to de- tinue to scale up. In a relatively short period of time, the sign a vessel that Bryce calls “future-proof,” capable of in- industry has advanced from 2 MW turbines to the 10-12 stalling the fxed foundations for tomorrow’s 20 MW tur- 26 OFFSHORE ENGINEER OEDIGITAL.COM