Cleantech Business News JanFeb18

23
Shorter foundations for offshore
wind turbines win research award
The Ørsted-led PISA research project has provided essential
new knowledge about how offshore wind turbine foundations
can be designed in a smarter way to reduce production costs.
In the long term, this can help make the green power
cheaper. The project has now been rewarded with the
prestigious Fleming award from the British Geotechnical
Association.
PISA (Pile Soil Analysis) is a research project on the design of
monopile foundations for offshore wind turbines. The main
conclusion from the PISA project is that pile foundations
don't need to be as long as previously assumed in order to
withstand the huge wind forces the turbine's rotor blades are
exposed to. It's important new knowledge, because shorter
foundations make it cheaper to install offshore wind
turbines, which means that the PISA project could impact
the future price of green power.
Senior Manager at Ørsted's R&D Project Management,
Jesper Skov Gretlund, PISA says: "The method is already
becoming popular in offshore design. It's one of the many
initiatives that are helping to realise our ambition of making
green energy cheaper than energy from fossil sources."
The project's Technical Manager, Miguel Pacheco Andrade,
from Ørsted, says: "Being recognised at the highest
academic level is a great honour. PISA is an example of what
you can achieve when the best researchers get together with
leading industrial players and take a targeted approach to
challenging existing assumptions."
The new monopile design is the result of a collaboration
between eleven industry partners as well as the University of
Oxford, Imperial College London and University College
Dublin. The 11 partners are: Ørsted, SSE, Statoil, RWE,
Statkraft, Iberdrola, Vattenfall, Alstom, Van Oord, EDF and
Eon. The collaboration was organised and operated under
Carbon Trust Offshore Wind Accelerator which has
specialised in cross-industry collaboration within offshore
wind power.
The previous design methodology originated from the
American oil and gas industry and was developed in the
1970s and 80s. A new design methodology was developed in
two stages. First, the academic work group, led by Oxford
University and including Imperial College London and
University College Dublin, developed the new model.
Subsequently, the new model was tested by the Ørsted-led
team of industry players at two sites (Cowden, England, and
Dunkirk, France) to assess and validate the new design
method.
The Fleming Competition is held annually to commemorate the
life and work of Dr. Ken Fleming and to recognise excellence in
the practical application of geotechnics in a project or a part of a
project. The award goes to the project team which most
demonstrates excellence in geotechnical design and
construction. Teamwork across disciplines is also considered, as
is innovation.
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