Monthly Archives: January 2022

One of the turbines at the Triton Knoll offshore wind farm, which is located in waters off England's east coast.

Ian Greenwood

Turbine commissioning at one of the world's biggest offshore wind farms is complete and full operations are slated to begin in the first quarter of 2022, according to German power firm RWE.

The 857 megawatt Triton Knoll Offshore Wind Farm is situated in waters off England's east coast and uses 90 wind turbines from Danish firm Vestas.

In a statement Thursday RWE said Triton Knoll would produce "sufficient electricity to meet the needs of around 800,000 homes each year." Investment in the project amounts to approximately 2 billion (around $2.74 billion).

RWE has a 59% stake in Triton Knoll. Its other owners are Kansai Electric Power and J-Power, who have stakes of 16% and 25%, respectively. RWE is responsible for the project's construction, operation and maintenance.

Triton Knoll produced its first power in March 2021and its final turbine was installed last September.

The North Sea, where Triton Knoll is located, is home to a number of large-scale offshore wind facilities. These include the 1.2 gigawatt Hornsea One development, which is located in waters off Yorkshire and uses 174 turbines.

Looking ahead, major projects planned for the North Sea include the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, which will have a total capacity of 3.6 GW once completed. The development of the project is taking place in three phases.

U.K. authorities want 40 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030. The European Union, which the U.K. left in January 2020, is targeting 300 GW of offshore wind by the middle of this century.

Across the Atlantic, the U.S. has some way to go to catch up with Europe. America's first offshore wind facility, the 30 megawatt Block Island Wind Farm in waters off Rhode Island, only started commercial operations in late 2016.

Change looks to be coming, however. In November ground was broken on a project dubbed the United States' "first commercial scale offshore wind farm."

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One of the world's biggest offshore wind farms gears up for full operations - CNBC

RICHMOND, Va. (WAVY) In some of Gov. Ralph Northams final days in office, Virginia has signed an agreement with Denmark to boost the offshore wind industry.

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed virtually Thursday morning by Secretary of Commerce and Trade (SOCT) Brian Ball and Dan Jrgensen, minister of the Danish Ministry of Climate Energy and Utilities.

Northams office on Thursday evening released information about the agreement, which establishes a partnership between Virginia and Denmark to share knowledge of challenges, successes, and best practices when it comes to developing offshore wind and its supply chain in each location.

We have purposely worked to position Virginia as a leader in offshore wind. Off our coast, we have the first turbines in federal waters, and we have two major wind farmers in development. Our Port of Virginia will the launching point for turbine components on the East Coast. We are well positioned to continue growing in this area, said Northam. Denmark has the highest proportion of wind power in the world, and we can learn a great deal from their experience. I thank Denmark for its cooperation and look forward to working together to build this new industry, promote clean energy, and create jobs right here in the Commonwealth.

Together, Virginia and Denmark work to find ways to quickly and efficiently develop an offshore wind industry. Theyll also look at bigger picture items such as renewable energy, mitigating climate change, and energy security.

Virginia already installed the first two wind turbines in federal waters in 2020. The area will also be home to two major wind farms, which are in development now. The Coastal Virginia Offshore Windfarm will be the largest offshore wind farm in the U.S., generating 2.6 gigawatts of power when its completed in 2026. The Kitty Hawk offshore wind farm will be created by Avangrid Renewables off the coast of North Carolina that will produce 2.5 gigawatts of power.

Virginias ambition and Denmarks experience make a perfect partnership. I am therefore very pleased that Denmark and Virginia now establishes new cooperation on offshore wind. Virginia has made an ambitious decision to build a 2.6 gigawatt offshore wind farm by 2026. I hope that our long regulatory experiences within offshore wind can contribute to a successful undertaking in Virginia. At the same time, Denmark can be inspired by new and innovative approaches. Together, we stand stronger in the green transition,said Jrgensen, minister for Climate, Energy and Utilities.

Virginia already has two Danish firms present in the state: rsted and Rose Holm Inc.

In January 2020, Northam announced an agreement with rsted to lease a portion of the Portsmouth Marine Terminal for offshore wind staging materials and equipment. The lease is expected to run through 2026 as rsted installs nearly 3,000 megawatts of wind energy projects in the United States.

Having built the worlds first offshore wind farm in Denmark and installed Americas first turbines in federal waters, ourrsted team is proud the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Kingdom of Denmark have partnered to help advance the U.S. offshore wind industry,said David Hardy, CEO ofrsted Offshore North America.Building a sustainable offshore wind energy industry in the U.S. requires both international experience and local expertise. This partnership formally establishes the dialogue to achieve this and will help ensure a strong clean energy future that creates good-paying jobs.

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Virginia, Denmark partner to boost offshore wind industry - WAVY.com

Bremerhaven-based association WAB e.V., together with several other German organisations and trade associations, has called on the new German government to accelerate and distribute its offshore wind expansion targets more evenly over the coming years, and to strengthen employment and value chain.

The call for action follows the release of the latest offshore wind statistics from Deutsche Windguard, which show no new installations in the country in 2021. Overall, Germany currently has 1,501 offshore wind turbines with a capacity of 7,794 MW connected to the grid.

Tender volumes should be significantly increased this year to enable more construction activity more quickly, said the German Wind Energy Association (BWE), the German Offshore Wind Farm Operators Association, the Offshore Wind Energy Foundation, VDMA Power Systems, and WAB e.V.

The offshore wind targets recently set in the coalition agreement must now be incorporated into the countrys Offshore Wind Act(WindSeeG)without delay in order to avoid further loss of time, according to the organisations.

The commitment of the new German coalition to significantly accelerate the expansion of offshore wind energy is just as correct as the concrete target of at least 30 gigawatts by 2030. This target creates a positive perspective for the entire value chain, BWE, BWO, VDMA Power Systems, WAB and the OFFSHORE-WINDENERGIE Foundation commented on the new expansion targets.

Now the grid and spatial planning for the implementation of the targeted expansion path should be revised without delay. The aim must be to leverage all acceleration potentials in order to enable an efficient and climate-protection-friendly expansion.

The planned tender volumes must be significantly increased as quickly as possible in order to maintain and expand the existing innovation potential as well as employment and the value chain in Germany, the industry organisations said.

In addition, the spatial potential in German waters must be fully exploited. Conflicts of use should be resolved pragmatically and in line with climate protection, as such also supporting the interests of environmental protection.

It is also important to avoid an expansion bottleneck at the end of the decade, which could lead to bottlenecks in the supply chain and pose challenges for the industrys capacity planning especially since other nations have also increased their expansion targets, the organisations said in a joint press release on 13 January.

They also urged the German government to clarify at an early stage which additional offshore wind expansion requirements will be required for the increased target of 10 GW for electrolysis capacity for green hydrogen.

These areas should also be promptly located and put out to tender without delay. The regulatory framework for green hydrogen requires jointly coordinated specifications in Germany and Europe to make the market ramp-up of the green hydrogen economy commercially feasible, the organisations said.

The appropriate infrastructure is important for the medium- to long-term expansion of offshore wind energy. This also includes the coordinated expansion of electricity and gas grids for the production of green hydrogen in the North and Baltic Seas.

The industry organisations have also recommended that the authorities responsible for the expansion of offshore wind energy must be quickly reinforced in terms of personnel in order to be able to cope with the significantly accelerated planned expansion.

In addition, in order to have the necessary skilled workers for the planned long-term expansion of offshore wind energy,relevant study programs must be optimized. Training and continuing education programs must be supported and promoted, the German industry pointed out.

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Industry Urges German Gov't to Accelerate and Stabilise Offshore Wind Expansion - Offshore WIND

Loren Steffy, UH Energy Scholar

AT SEA - APRIL 28: Workers look out at wind turbines at the Alpha Ventus offshore windpark on ... [+] April 28, 2010 in the North Sea approximately 70km north of the German coast. Alpha Ventus, which is a pilot project between energy producers E.On, Vattenfall and EWE, officially began operation the day before and will deliver 60 Megawatts of power from its 12 turbines. It is also Germany's first offshore windpark. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Silence can be deadly. Thats the key lesson from a new paper examining communications failures as a root cause of offshore drilling accidents.

While the industry has gotten better about identifying root causes of accidents from an operating standpoint, too often investigations also cite communications failures as a blanket explanation that implicitly assumes that accidents could be prevented if employees spoke up about safety, according to the paper Listening to the Well, Listening to Each Other, and Listening to the Silence New Safety Lessons from Deepwater Horizon published late last year in the American Chemical Societys journal Chemical Health and Safety.

But the paper found that in accidents such as the Deepwater Horizon disaster there are many instances in which concerned employees do speak up, but theyre ignored. Their voices often are drowned out by other concerns such as time pressure or a culture that favors a can-do attitude focused on results. And those pressures can have a chilling effect whether intentional or not that keeps many employees from raising concerns.

You find a lot of reports that say there was a lack of communication, and communication should be encouraged, said Antoine J. Jetter, a professor of engineering and technology management at Portland State University and one of the papers three authors. It seems an almost silly explanation.

The paper found that in many cases, communication did happen, but other barriers prevented concerns from being heard, acknowledged or acted upon by superiors.

Aggressive timelines for completing projects often the result of the huge cost involve in offshore drilling can create a toxic environment for employees who dare to voice concerns that could add delays.

Although the Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred more than a decade ago, it continues to yield lessons of what not to do and offer insights into avoiding similar mistakes in the future. Much, of course, has been written about what happened the evening of April 20, 2010, just before 10 p.m., aboard the rig that was drilling the Macondo prospect in the Gulf of Mexico.

A blowout shot flames some 200 feet above the derrick and explosions ripped through the living quarters and workspaces, killing 11 members of the crew and critically injuring 63 others. The rig burned and sank in 5,000 feet of water, severing the riser and allowing oil to flow freely from an open hole on the sea floor for 87 days.

Since then, the cause of the accident has been the focus of numerous investigations, scholarly papers, popular books (including one that I wrote) and even a movie with big-name Hollywood stars.

But I was intrigued by this latest study because it zeroed in on a key element of the disaster communication failures and asked why attempts to communicate concerns about the troublesome Macondo well went unheeded.

The lead author of the paper is Lillian Espinoza-Gala, a research associate at Louisiana State Universitys department of entrepreneurship and information systems. Espinosa-Gala started working on offshore rigs in 1973, and a year later became the first woman to hold a technical job on a Gulf rig. Over the years, she was injured twice in accidents, one of which was almost fatal, and she lost a brother and a subordinate to accidents. As a member of the Deepwater Horizon Study Group and on other examinations of the disaster she has worked tirelessly to bring the rig workers perspective to what happened and to ensure those who lost their lives are not forgotten.

Her first-hand experience and her long history studying offshore disasters such as Macondo gives her a greater sense of empathy with offshore workers, as well as greater urgency and determination that the safety concerns of front-line workers need to be heard.

Had I not lost a brother when he was 43, and had I not almost been killed myself, people would have been more hesitant to share with me, she said.

Her co-author, Ahmed Alibage, an assistant adjunct professor and postdoctoral fellow at Portland State, previously worked as a city engineer and safety manager. While it was a different industry, he saw many parallels between the manufacturing operations he inspected and the offshore culture aboard the Deepwater Horizon.

Sometimes, youd see everybody hiding whats going on, he said. Theyd say dont tell the manager. That reluctance to let others know of potential dangers can be deadly, and it stems from a culture in which workers are given the message, often subliminally, to keep quiet.

For example, a company may say safety is important, but if workers are given bonuses for maintaining a schedule or managers are pressured by their superiors to keep a project on track, it can stifle safety concerns form the front line.

Rig workers on the Deepwater Horizon, for example, had stop work authority to shut down drilling if they had safety concerns, but as a practical matter, most workers were afraid to invoke it. The pressure from managers onshore to get the well drilled was simply too great.

How can organizations improve safety communications and ensure that bad news, however unpopular, is heard and considered?

The authors studied the habits of high-reliability organizations (HROs) to see how they address communications issues, and came away with three recommendations:

Separate risk assessment functions from leadership decisions about how much risk is acceptable. This separation can be achieved by setting standards for risk evaluation that must be completed before a leadership decision, such as moving ahead with a drilling program, can be made.

Be open to bad news. Knowledge about specific risks cant be hidden or downplayed to protect team morale, to avoid unpleasant conversation or to assuage competitive worries that risk communication or safety issues will leak to outsiders. Quite simply, people cant manage risks if they arent aware of them. In risk assessment, positive thinking isnt a business virtue.

Keep options open. Reliability requires enough time to carefully investigate and deliberate a situation. When schedule changes or a decision that stop drilling are declared out of the question, it may block any safe path forward. The Deepwater Horizon was squeezing the Macondo well into a busy drilling schedule, and any delays threatened other drilling programs. Rather than acknowledging that the Macondo well couldnt be completed as planned and adjusting the schedule, leadership tried to maintain chirpy optimism and a can-do attitude.

These factors were exacerbated by the fact that part of the drilling crews pay was contingent on speed and maintaining the schedule.

It really boils down to leadership, Jetter said. Does leadership have all the alternatives on the table? Or is residence defined as getting the job done no matter what? If you have a culture of dont talk about that thing or keep a can-do attitude, then effective communication wont happen.

It also means building more time into drilling schedules to allow for safety-related delays, which will likely become more difficult as the economic challenges of extracting fossil fuels increase.

But as the Macondo disaster reminds us, ignoring safety concerns from the front lines or dismissing communications issues out of hand can be catastrophic.

Loren Steffyis a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly, an executive producer for Rational Middle Media and a managing director for 30 Point Strategies, where he heads the 30 Point Press publishing imprint. He is the author of five nonfiction books: Deconstructed: An Insiders View of Illegal Immigration and the Building Trades (with Stan Marek), The Last Trial of T. Boone Pickens (with Chrysta Castaeda), George P. Mitchell: Fracking, Sustainability, and an Unorthodox Quest to Save the Planet, The Man Who Thought Like a Ship, and Drowning in Oil: BP and the Reckless Pursuit of of Profit. His first novel, The Big Empty, was published in May 2021.

Steffy is the former business columnist for the Houston Chronicle and previously was the Dallas (and Houston) bureau chief and a senior writer for Bloomberg News. His award-winning writing has been published in newspapers and other publications worldwide. He has a bachelors degree in journalism from Texas A&M University.

UH Energy is the University of Houstons hub for energy education, research and technology incubation, working to shape the energy future and forge new business approaches in the energy industry.

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Listening To The Well, Listening To The Workers: A New Approach To Safety Communications Offshore - Forbes

Van Oords jack-up MPI Resolution has installed the ten monopile foundations at the first wind farm to be built in the Mediterranean Sea the 30 MW Taranto offshore wind farm.

The Taranto offshore wind farm, also known as Beleolico, is located in Italys Apulia Region near the Taranto harbour.

The wind farm will comprise ten MySE 3.0-135 wind turbines provided by MingYang Smart Energy.

At this moment preparations are being made for the installation of the turbines and the expectation is that this will be completed in February, a spokesperson for Van Oord told offshore WIND.

MPI Resolution is in charge of installing the wind farms monopiles, secondary steel, and the wind turbines.

The wind farm is scheduled to be fully commissioned in 2022 and provide about 55,600 MWh of electricity per year, enough to meet the demand of around 18,500 households, Renexia SpA, the developer of the project, said.

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Foundations Stand at First Mediterranean Offshore Wind Farm | Offshore Wind - Offshore WIND

Ireland-based DP Energy is to join forces with EDF Renewables to develop the Gwynt Glas floating offshore windfarm in Welsh and English waters, which is expected to have a capacity of up to 1GW.

According to EDF, the windfarm is a key part of meeting the ambition declared by Crown Estates last autumn to have 4GW of offshore wind capacity in the Celtic Sea.

Floating technologies, which are better suited to deeper waters than traditional fixed foundations, are set to play a key part in the sustainable future of UK offshore wind, unlocking new areas of seabed.

News of the project comes after industry specialists warned that fixed offshore wind turbines were becoming too big for foundation capacity.

EDF has confirmed that work to refine the development area and constraint studies for the project are already underway. Initial research is focusing on a 1,500km2 area located approximately 70km from the shore.Remote aerial surveys for marine mammal and birdsare said to have started in spring last year, indicating the commitment already made to the project.

EDF Renewables UK head of offshore wind Scott Sutherland said: This is a great start to 2022 for us and we are very pleased to announce this partnership with DP Energy. We firmly believe Gwynt Glas will be a catalyst for further supply chain growth across the UK which is something we as a company are very supportive of.

We will use our experience in offshore wind to help bring opportunities for local, regional and national companies on this project and on others, such our Blyth floating project and the two we are bidding for in the ScotWind process.

Floating offshore wind is an exciting new technology and will bring much needed inward investment which can regenerate coastal economies and communities.

No details about the technical elements of the floating turbines has been released but the scale of the development at 1GW is significant the combined capacity of EDFs current installed onshore and offshore wind power and battery installations across 37 sites amounts to the same total. The firm has said that it currently has 5GW of renewable energy project in the planning and development stage.

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EDF partners up to deliver 1GW Celtic Sea floating offshore windfarm - New Civil Engineer

The Scottish Offshore Wind Energy Council (SOWEC) has published a set of draft principles that it aims to underpin a new collaborative framework for Scotlands offshore wind sector.

SOWEC, which is a partnership between the Scottish public sector and the offshore wind industry, will now seek feedback on the draft principles through engagement with Scottish ports and the wider supply chain.

The principles set out how companies are expected to work together, and practical steps such as sharing data and communication that can lead to better outcomes.

The 17 principles include priority infrastructure investment for the framework should be floating platform fabrication and manufacture and using the collaborative framework for wider engagement between project developers and port providers.

When ScotWind results are announced on 17 January, developers with option agreements will be asked to join work to move the collaborative framework forward, importantly, adding a level of detail which will set out clear and measurable objectives to the framework and the principles as needed.

SOWEC industry co-chair Brian McFarlane said: The offshore wind industry is an expert in working in partnership in the delivery of projects, and we are now working to apply this expertise to supporting supply chain and ports growth.

ScotWind is a once in a generation opportunity, so it is vital that industry works together to support Scottish ports create a world class cluster that can underpin successful delivery of projects between now and the early 2030s.

Scottish Business Minister Ivan McKee said: As part of ScotWind, developers were asked to clarify their level of commitment to engage and work with the supply chain here in Scotland.

The principles being published today are a clear way to support these commitments, helping forge an effective partnership to deliver on the exciting potential that offshore wind presents in the coming years.

Scotland has world class engineering and energy expertise, and I am pleased to see Scottish ports being engaged in this partnership.

I am grateful to industry members of SOWEC for their work in taking forward the recommendations of the Strategic Investment Assessment, and look forward to working with them to agree next steps after ScotWind lease options are announced.

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Scotland advances offshore collaborative framework - reNEWS