Lease Extension for EMEC
Fall of Warness Tidal Site

Crown Estate Scotland has granted an extension to the European Marine Energy Centre’s (EMEC) lease for the Fall of Warness tidal energy test site in Orkney until 2040. The extension will support the long-term ambitions and demonstration plans of EMEC’s clients.

EMEC’s Fall of Warness site offers developers of tidal energy technologies eight grid-connected test berths ranging from 12 to 50 m in depth.

Fugro Work Extension
For Dutch Wind Farm

Fugro has been awarded a further substantial marine site characterization project off the Dutch Coast. This is the largest geotechnical site characterization program tendered by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency and will be performed in the Hollandse Kust (west) Wind Farm Zone.

Other contracts executed by Fugro in the various zones of Hollandse Kust and Borssele wind energy developments since 2015 include geophysical and geotechnical data acquisition and metocean monitoring.

The target start date was in April. The geotechnical program will continue until September and comprises a seabed investigation and borehole drilling. Fugro will also deliver laboratory testing and an integrated geological/geotechnical soil model for future developers of the wind farm to prepare their bids.

The fieldwork will utilize Fugro vessels and SEACALF MkIV system for seabed cone penetration testing.

The Hollandse Kust (west) Wind Farm Zone has a total capacity of 1,400 MW.

Auxiliary Wind Power

Norsepower Oy Ltd.’s Rotor Sail Solution has received the first-ever type approval design certificate granted to an auxiliary wind propulsion system on board a commercial ship. The type approval from DNV GL was issued in February after a design assessment of Norsepower’s 30-by-5-m Rotor Sail. The landmark certification means that vessels operating the Rotor Sail Solution are technically capable of safely navigating “all operational and environmental situations.”

Success for Alpha’s First
Year in Australia

One year after entering the Australian wind energy market, Alpha Offshore Service has successfully completed its first 10 projects in the area. Alpha expanded into the Australian market in February last year to support new and existing clients with operations in West Australia, South Australia and New South Wales. These campaigns have implemented wind turbine blade upgrades and carried out main component exchanges for a development that required the upgrade of 26 gears. Australia’s Clean Energy Council reported that 14.7 GW worth of large-scale wind and solar projects were either under construction or had reached financial closure by the end of 2018.

GreenSteam to Contribute to
Maritime Zero Emissions

GreenSteam has joined Denmark’s Green Ship of the Future (GSF). GreenSteam’s machine-learning platform can make sense of the complex factors that impact vessel performance, help to build accurate performance models for a vessel, and highlight where inefficiencies lie. This technology will help support GSF’s goal to explore the road toward zero-emission maritime transportation.

GreenSteam’s machine-learning Discover service will be used as part of the GSF 2019 Retrofit project to investigate the effects fuel-saving technologies have on vessel performance. The Discover service, which can be applied to all vessel types, will be used to build an accurate performance model of the project vessel and identify a wide range of opportunities to improve efficiency.

Discover will also highlight any changes to the vessel performance created by the introduction of the different technologies to the ship and remove “noise” by understanding external factors such as hull fouling, sea state and weather conditions.

Report Details Lessons
From Minas Passage

Nova Scotia’s efforts to explore the energy potential in the Minas Passage will benefit from the new report “Lessons Learned: Marine Operations in the Minas Passage,” which documents the critical information learned from working in the challenging conditions among the world’s most powerful tides.

Commissioned by the Offshore Energy Research Association through the Nova Scotia Department of Energy and Mines, the report enables marine operators, research scientists, vessel owners and the public to review lessons drawn from dealing with situations such as sensor platform deployments and recoveries, mooring trials, turbine operations, and diving and ROV activities.

The report also looks at how the local supply chain has been involved in tidal energy activities.

Opening of Arkona
Wind Farm in Germany

The Arkona offshore wind farm in the Baltic Sea in Mukran on the German island of Rügen is officially open. Arkona is operated by the Germany company E.ON in collaboration with Equinor. It has the capacity to supply renewable energy to 400,000 German homes. The wind farm started supplying power to the German national grid in September 2018, and its 60 wind turbines, each producing 6 MW, reached peak production in 2019. The farm’s capacity is 385 MW.