Marine Operations and Logistics

Developing methods and tools for efficient and safe marine operations and logistic planning for installation and maintenance of offshore wind farms.

Work Package 2 is led by Henning Braaten from SINTEF Ocean and Svein Sævik from NTNU. Its focus areas are installation and replacement, vessels and access solutions and offshore wind farm logistics.

Anticipated results:

  • Digital twin for more efficient marine operations
  • Safe and robust access solutions
  • Optimal logistic planning for marine O&M
Svein Sævik

Hypothesis

Developing efficient and innovative installation/access methods and optimised maintenance strategies is the key to enable massive deployment of future offshore wind farms and to reduce OPEX.

Methodology and research tasks

Installation and replacement operations.

Blade installation/replacement and seabed preparation methods.

Service Operation Vessel (SOV) for offshore wind turbines

Advanced simulations for vessel design optimisation and onboard decision support system (ODSS) for walk-to-work (W2W) operations.

Offshore wind farm (WF) logistics

Installation and decommissioning logistics, predictive maintenance logistics and industrialisation of supply chain.

Innovations

Main results from 2022

Installation and replacement operations

  • PhD candidate working on “An approach for safe and cost-effective installation of offshore wind power cables”.
  • Report on “Installation and replacement of offshore wind turbine blades”.
  • Mapped potential innovations when it comes to installation of GBS (gravity-based structures). Work to be finished and presented in 2023.
Computer-generated image showing a subsea cable being installed.

Service Operation Vessel (SOV) for offshore wind turbines

  • PhD candidate working on “An approach for safe and cost-effective installation of offshore wind power cables”.

Optimisation models for planning marine logistics operations

  • PhD candidate working on “Predictive maintenance planning at offshore wind farms”.
  • Issued report on “Predictive maintenance logistics for offshore wind farms”.
  • Further developed COSMO – A decision support tool for planning the maritime logistics of the installation of large offshore wind farms.

Previous results

Installation and replacement operations

  • PhD candidate working on “An approach for safe and cost-effective installation of offshore wind power cables”
  • Ongoing review work on “Installation and replacement of offshore wind turbine blades”. Report to be issued in 2022.

Service Operation Vessel (SOV) for offshore wind turbines

  • Implemented a numerical model accounting for finite water depth in MULDIF.

Optimisation models for planning marine logistics operations

  • Developed initial version of COSMO – A decision support tool for planning the maritime logistics of the installation of large offshore wind farms.

 

COSMO scenario overview with Pareto front showing the schedules found with lowest installation time and lowest installation cost.
COSMO scenario overview with Pareto front showing the schedules found with lowest installation time and lowest installation cost.