Addressing the challenges of offshore wind turbine installation and maintenance in high winds

Crane rails: Why they improve offshore lifting capabilities

Crane rails: why they improve offshore lifting capabilities

As demands on offshore wind installation processes increase, crane technology is being pushed to its limits. Not only do offshore cranes need to lift heavier and larger wind turbine components, but they also need to operate in more gruelling weather conditions.

Increasingly, vessel owners and contractors are looking to meet these demands by boosting crane capabilities with technologies such as taglines and various forms of intelligent lifting systems. But there are important implications of these additional demands that impact crane design and performance.

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How to overcome technical constraints of the offshore wind lifting process

Technical constraints of lifting

The lifting process on jack-up vessels is a key process in any offshore wind turbine installation or maintenance project. Control systems such as tagline systems are a necessary part of the lifting setup. Their purpose is to help manoeuver loads – such as wind turbine components – to the desired point accurately and safely.

The most obvious source of movement of a hoisted load is due to inertia and wind. Yet the solutions for controlling these motions are subject to other practical constraints that often make it difficult to achieve sufficient control during the lifting process. Continue reading

What’s next in offshore wind installation technology?

As offshore wind turbine sizes grow rapidly, the technology needed to install and commission turbines is not following suit. This is a significant barrier to progress in the offshore wind industry and is continuing to make it difficult to reduce the levelised cost of energy.

Today’s wind turbines and the associated installation technology, such as taglines, have been created from the same baseline. But it is all essential just an incremental evolution of technologies that have been moved from onshore to offshore. There have been no significant design revolutions.

At the same time, we are using the same technology developed for smaller turbines and assuming it will deal with 8MW turbines – and bigger. We are increasingly demanding more from the equipment, but in reality the technology has its limits. Continue reading