Recent months have seen the already fast pace of growth in the offshore wind industry accelerate, heightening concerns about whether there will be enough wind turbine installation vessels to meet demand
More and more countries are announcing plans to build offshore windfarms, and targets in many existing markets have been raised, in some cases, for the second or third time in a matter of a few years. By some estimates, the offshore wind pipeline has grown 20% in the last couple of months alone.
The supply chain obviously needs to ramp up quickly, but how will so many offshore wind turbines be installed when, by the mid-2020s, analysts assert, there is likely to be a dearth of installation vessels able to install 15-MW plus turbines?
Questions were raised about whether there would be enough installation vessels even before the latest spurt in the growth of the project pipeline and, with recent newbuilds costing in the range of US$300-350M, there is a growing need for new ways to install turbines and do so more economically.
The answer could lie in a number of much more flexible installation concepts that are being developed, including one, the WindSpider, which secured a Nkr8.9M (US$1.0M) grant from Innovation Norway in March 2022, having secured investment from industrial and financial investors, in addition to existing shareholders in November 2021.
As WindSpider chief executive Kent Lynggaard Vinkel and chief financial officer and commercial director André Ølberg explained, the funds will help the company progress the development, qualification, and commercialisation of the vessel-free installation concept.
Mr Vinkel came to WindSpider in late 2021, having worked for several years at wind turbine company Vestas. Mr Ølberg has experience in M&A, financing and strategic development and came to the company from HitecVision, so both bring indepth understanding of the wind energy industry and of the offshore market.
As they told OWJ in an exclusive interview, WindSpider is a universal, self-erecting solution for the installation of offshore wind turbines that uses the tower of a turbine as part of the crane when undertaking installation, maintenance, repowering, and decommissioning. It has a lifting capacity of 800-1,200 tonnes and is a scalable concept that could, Messrs Vinkel and Ølberg assert, go beyond 1,200 tonnes, if required.
Installation using WindSpider doesn’t require any changes to the turbine and it is suitable for use with turbines of all types. It has been designed to operate in wind speeds and significant wave heights similar to those in which conventional installation operations take place.
