Offshore wind installation vessels – A comparative assessment for UK offshore rounds 1 and 2

Paterson, John; D’Amico, Federico; Thies, Philipp R.; Kurt, Rafet Emek; Harrison, Gareth

doi:10.1016/j.oceaneng.2017.08.008

Cited by 36 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Cutting methods include internal or external abrasive water jetting, oxy-flame cutting, diamond wire cutting, explosives, laser cutting and "felling" of the wind turbine structures by using internal or external cutting methods (which reduce or remove the need for a specialised vessel). There are also different lifting and removal options that can be adopted from the wind turbine installation methods such as the bunny ear and tower in one piece and hub and tower in one piece (see Kaiser and Snyder 2012a;Gjødvad and Ibsen 2016;Paterson et al 2018;Castro-Santos et al 2018). The total lifting and removal cost of wind turbines are calculated by the following equation:…”

Section: Lifting and Removal Of Wind Turbines Tower Foundations Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

An economic assessment framework for decommissioning of offshore wind farms using a cost breakdown structure

Adedipe

Shafiee

2021

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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Purpose As wind power generation increases globally, there will be a substantial number of wind turbines that need to be decommissioned in the coming years. It is crucial for wind farm developers to design safe and cost-effective decommissioning plans and procedures for assets before they reach the end of their useful life. Adequate financial provisions for decommissioning operations are essential, not only for wind farm owners but also for national governments. Economic analysis approaches and cost estimation models therefore need to be accurate and computationally efficient. Thus, this paper aims to develop an economic assessment framework for decommissioning of offshore wind farms using a cost breakdown structure (CBS) approach. Methods In the development of the models, all the cost elements and their key influencing factors are identified from literature and expert interviews. Similar activities within the decommissioning process are aggregated to form four cost groups including: planning and regulatory approval, execution, logistics and waste management, and post-decommissioning. Some mathematical models are proposed to estimate the costs associated with decommissioning activities as well as to identify the most critical cost drivers in each activity group. The proposed models incorporate all cost parameters involved in each decommissioning phase for more robust cost assessment. Results and discussion A case study of a 500 MW baseline offshore wind farm is proposed to illustrate the models’ applicability. The results show that the removal of wind turbines and foundation structures is the most costly and lengthy stage of the decommissioning process due to many requirements involved in carrying out the operations. Although inherent uncertainties are taken into account, cost estimates can be easily updated when new information becomes available. Additionally, further decommissioning cost elements can be captured allowing for sensitivity analysis to be easily performed. Conclusions Using the CBS approach, cost drivers can be clearly identified, revealing critical areas that require attention for each unique offshore wind decommissioning project. The CBS approach promotes adequate management and optimisation of identified key cost drivers, which will enable all stakeholders involved in offshore wind farm decommissioning projects to achieve cost reduction and optimal schedule, especially for safety-critical tasks.

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Section: Lifting and Removal Of Wind Turbines Tower Foundations Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

An economic assessment framework for decommissioning of offshore wind farms using a cost breakdown structure

Adedipe

Shafiee

2021

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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“…It is therefore important that marine operations can be scrutinised in advance to ensure the correct planning, resourcing and equipment decisions can be made. [1][2][3] Operating within metocean conditions brings significant challenges in understanding the variability of the weather characteristics with the combined impact on operational downtimes or health and safety risks. As metocean conditions are site specific, this requires a bespoke assessment for each project and therefore 1 EDF Energy R&D UK Centre Limited, Croydon, UK adaptable assessment tools are necessary to simulate the characteristics of each site.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…It is therefore important that marine operations can be scrutinised in advance to ensure the correct planning, resourcing and equipment decisions can be made. 1–3…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing marine operations with a Markov-switching autoregressive metocean model

Paterson

Thies

Sueur

et al. 2020

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part M:

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This article presents a metocean modelling methodology using a Markov-switching autoregressive model to produce stochastic wind speed and wave height time series, for inclusion in marine risk planning software tools. By generating a large number of stochastic weather series that resemble the variability in key metocean parameters, probabilistic outcomes can be obtained to predict the occurrence of weather windows, delays and subsequent operational durations for specific tasks or offshore construction phases. To cope with the variation in the offshore weather conditions at each project, it is vital that a stochastic weather model is adaptable to seasonal and inter-monthly fluctuations at each site, generating realistic time series to support weather risk assessments. A model selection process is presented for both weather parameters across three locations, and a personnel transfer task is used to contextualise a realistic weather window analysis. Summarising plots demonstrate the validity of the presented methodology and that a small extension improves the adaptability of the approach for sites with strong correlations between wind speed and wave height. It is concluded that the overall methodology can produce suitable wind speed and wave time series for the assessment of marine operations, yet it is recommended that the methodology is applied to other sites and operations, to determine the method’s adaptability to a wide range of offshore locations.

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“…A recent study of the details of 87 wind farms installed between 2000-2017 is presented by Lacal-Arántegui et al [1]. For discussions of the State of Art technology, see [2]- [6]. More details of actual installation of offshore wind turbines is disused in Gudmestad et al [7].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Wind Turbines Designed for Easy Installation

Gudmestad

2020

WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment

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The costs of installation, intervention/maintenance and decommissioning of fixed bottom, founded offshore wind turbine concepts are unreasonably high when using state of the art technology. For such wind turbine concepts, state of the art is to use jackups or crane vessels for said operations. This might not be attractive in view of the large costs of employing sufficiently sized equipment that can operate under most weather conditions. In particular, there is a concern regarding the limited availability of offshore wind turbine installation-equipment in situations where there are larger waves most of the year, as in the North Sea. The investment costs for the wind turbines are thus larger than necessary. There is thus a need for new thinking to develop safe but less costly technology and procedures for these operations. Furthermore, heavy maintenance is particularly difficult for offshore wind turbines, requiring the use of expensive offshore vessels, i.e. vessels requesting high day rates during operations. In view of this, new technical solutions are, in this paper, proposed for the installation, intervention/maintenance and decommissioning of offshore wind concepts. In particular, the use of ballast procedures combined with use of the less costly offshore service vessels to perform offshore operations safely will be investigated. Similarly, the state of art design of the wind turbines requires the use of large cranes for heavy maintenance of said equipment and it might be considered to lower the nacelle to perform such operations. These operations shall not, however, get in conflict with the requirement that the blades shall never touch the sea surface under any activity. The design is extended to floating wind turbines which can be optimized for cost saving fabrication and installation using the method described for the fixed wind turbine designs.

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Offshore wind installation vessels – A comparative assessment for UK offshore rounds 1 and 2

Cited by 36 publications

References 8 publications

An economic assessment framework for decommissioning of offshore wind farms using a cost breakdown structure

An economic assessment framework for decommissioning of offshore wind farms using a cost breakdown structure

Assessing marine operations with a Markov-switching autoregressive metocean model

Wind Turbines Designed for Easy Installation

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