Fred Olsen 1848 and Huisman have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for a floating maintenance system aimed at the floating wind market.
Fred Olsen 1848 has developed a “complete solution and operational procedure” for major component exchange for floating wind turbines.
To develop the crane required for such operation, the company teamed up with Huisman.
The complete solution enables the exchange of turbine components at the offshore site and further removes the need for dynamic lifts when performing the component exchange offshore, which are both expensive and entails high operational risk.
Sofie Olsen Jebsen, CEO of Fred Olsen 1848, said: “Innovation and collaboration are key to realising commercial development of floating offshore wind.
“We have worked to solve the maintenance challenge in floating wind by building on the decade-long experience with O&M operations from our sister-companies Fred Olsen Windcarrier and Global Wind Service.
“The present floating wind component exchange solutions are too costly in terms of assets required, downtime of the turbine and available weather windows.
“We believe the Floating Maintenance Solution will be a game-changer in the market and can enable the industrialisation of floating offshore wind”.
The Floating Maintenance Solution has already attracted the interest of several large floating offshore wind developers and is now entering a new phase where the next milestone is to conclude a detailed project FEED study with the aim of bringing the solution into operation before the end of this decade.
Positioned on the floating structure, the crane operates with the same motions as the floating foundation while its design is agnostic and compatible with most semi-submerged floating structures.