Minimising transportation and installation operation cost and time for offshore wind turbine farms with the use of the wind turbine shuttle

In recent years, a rapid development of the offshore wind power market has taken place. The growing demand for more offshore wind farms and the desire to make this technology more cost-effective has created many challenges for offshore contractors and their technology, particularly for turbine installation vessels. Currently, the most widely used equipment is the jack-up type crane vessels. These vessels have been optimised for turbine installation operations but are now starting to reach their limits in performance, based on the further improvement of the wind turbines, the fact that the wind farms located further and deeper at the sea. As a result, new designs may be better suited to the challenging requirements of the wind farm developers. In practical terms, it is difficult to predict whether a new concept will perform better another. Operational data from past turbine installation vessel operations can be used to identify important parameters that influence performance but is not practical when applied to unconventional designs such as the concept ship, “Wind Turbine Shuttle” designed by Huisman Equipment in the Netherlands. An extensive study is necessary requiring perhaps the development of new analysis tools. This study attempts to identify the major parameters that influence the operations of turbine installation vessels. It investigates with the use of different operational scenarios, how the procedure of installation and transportation of these vessels are influenced by their parameters such as the pre-assembly method of the wind turbine or the wind turbine sizes and their operating environment, using a market and technology review of the wind farm market, a sensitivity analysis of various design parameters and different case strategies investigating the performance of different turbine installation vessels operating in a predefined wind farm location. Because several strategies have shown that weather delays have a major effect on the workability of the vessel, the simulation model uses wave height time series data from measurements made in the North Sea. For the sensitivity studies of design parameters, results show that for any scenario, an optimal value for both significant wave height tolerance and transit speed can be found. The optimal parameters for the scenario designed in this study are similar to the specifications of the Wind Turbine Shuttle. Overall, results show a definite advantage of using a turbine installation vessel such as the Wind Turbine Shuttle over traditional jack-up vessels. However, as the model is based on many assumptions, the accuracy of the results would be significantly improved with additional real life data. Regardless of this, the study has demonstrated the advantage of opting for a systems approach containing various models that are connected to each other. This methodology has many possible future applications, not only for the evaluation of wind turbine installation vessels but for any vessel type employed in the offshore construction segment.Mechanical Engineering