Irish Shipping and Ports Requirements for the Ocean Energy Industry

Manufacture and foundation productionDue to market growth and the large size of turbines, wind-turbine manufacturers have been lookingtowards European portside turbine assembly facilities. More recently three large port developmentsat Sheerness, Hull and Belfast have been announced as potential assembly facilities. Roadtransportation is becoming less viable for completed nacelles, and offshore turbines need to beshipped by sea at some point for installation. It also makes sense to manufacture large components(such as castings) close to turbine manufacture.Particular requirements will vary depending on the activity being undertaken; however, in generalterms, manufacturing facilities at port locations will require substantial areas of development landwith good transport links and need to be well served by associated support services including supplyindustries and research and development.Whether steel monopiles, concrete gravity bases, or jacket or tripod structures, all offshore windfoundations are very large and once produced can only be transported by water. Much expansion ofproduction capacity will be required to meet future demand; hence it is likely that new coastallocations for foundation manufacture will be established. Compared with set-up times relating toother elements of the value chain, foundation manufacturing facilities can be set up relatively quickly.Construction and installationIndividual phases of a construction project may be operated by a specialist offshore contractor orwindfarm developer, or by the wind-turbine manufacturer offering a turnkey service. Port stevedoringand operation may be managed by the port owner or the site occupier.Typical activities during the topside installation phase include:Unloading in-bound components from supply vessels, such as towers, hubs, blades andnacellesLaying down products to ensure their availability when weather and vessel availability allowsconstruction to proceedInstalling turbines in batches, based on vessel capacity:ooooAssembling of tower sections and loading on to the installation vessel, which may involvevertical and/or horizontal loading, hence the high air-draft requirementsFitting two blades to each nacelle where the ‘bunny ears’ configuration is used, or fittingall three blades to the hub, with rotor horizontalPreparing and loading nacelles on to the installation vesselPreparing and loading remaining blades on to the installation vesselTypical requirements for port facilities to support an installation of 100 turbines per year would be:24-hour access200–300m length of quayside with high load-bearing capacity and adjacent access quay bearing capacity of typically 3 to 6 ton/m 2 , but in some cases may be up to 10 ton/m 2