A US start-up has secured funding to support the development of a concrete offshore wind turbine foundation that does not require a heavy-lift vessel for installation.
RCAM Technologies was chosen by the National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium for contract negotiation as part of the consortium’s second round of wind research and development projects.
RCAM’s award, which is one of two totalling $1.9m, will go towards “proving the feasibility and advance the design” of the company’s modular concrete foundation.
The two-year project scope includes the conceptual design, preliminary design, and feasibility assessment of the fixed-bottom, suction-bucket support structure and heavy-lift-vessel alternative for the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) 15MW reference turbine.
RCAM said its foundation “lowers the cost of support structures, develops an alternative solution for heavy-lift vessels, mitigates installation noise concerns, readily scales to larger turbines and deeper installations, and increases local content, manufacturing, and jobs.”
RCAM Technologies chief executive Jason Cottrell said: “I’m incredibly honoured that the consortium selected RCAM and our extremely talented project partners alongside two legendary pioneers in offshore wind, NREL and Principle Power.”
The project team also includes WSP USA, NREL, Esteyco, RRD Engineering, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
NETSCo, CATHIE, Structural Technologies, University of Delaware, Tufts University, and University of California Irvine will provide advisory and technical support.
Cottrell, a former NREL engineer, originally set up RCAM Technologies to develop a additive manufacturing technology for making concrete onshore wind turbine towers.
In 2018 the start-up began focusing efforts on developing so-called 3D concrete printing for building offshore wind turbine towers and foundations at or near ports to reduce time and costs that manufacturing, transporting and installing conventional monopile and steel tower foundations entail.