Daily Archives: February 6, 2021

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea unveiled a 48.5 trillion won ($43.2 billion) plan to build the worlds largest wind power plant by 2030 as part of efforts to foster an environmentally-friendly recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

FILE PHOTO: General view of the Walney Extension offshore wind farm operated by Orsted off the coast of Blackpool, Britain September 5, 2018. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo

The project is a major component of President Moon Jae-ins Green New Deal, initiated last year to curb reliance on fossil fuels in Asias fourth-largest economy and make it carbon neutral by 2050. [S6N29P01A]

Moon attended a signing ceremony in the southwestern coastal town of Sinan for the plant, which will have a maximum capacity of 8.2 gigawatts.

With this project, we are accelerating the eco-friendly energy transition and moving more vigorously toward carbon neutrality, Moon said at the event.

Utility and engineering companies also attended, including Korea Electric Power Corp, SK E&S, Hanwha Engineering & Construction Corp, Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction Co., CS Wind Corp and Samkang M&T Co.

The companies will provide 47.6 trillion of the required funding and the government the remaining 0.9 trillion, Moons office Blue House said.

It said the project would provide up to 5,600 jobs and help achieve a goal to boost the countrys wind power capacity to 16.5 GW by 2030 from 1.67 GW now.

The envisaged 8.2 GW amounts to the energy produced by six nuclear reactors, or the effects of planting 71 million pine trees, officials said.

To date, the worlds largest offshore wind farm is Hornsea 1 in Britain, which has 1.12 GW capacity.

($1 = 1,123.4000 won)

Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; editing by Barbara Lewis

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South Korea unveils $43 billion plan for world's largest offshore wind farm - Reuters

Building several dozen gigawatts of offshore wind capacity will require installing thousands of ... [+] offshore platforms on the Eastern Seaboard, amid some of the most heavily fished and navigated waters in North America. (Photo is of wind turbines in the Baltic Sea in 2020 by Patrick Pleul via Getty Images)

The regatta for setting the loftiest targets for offshore wind energy development has set sail.

Today,South Korea announced plans for 8.2 gigawattsof offshore wind. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson recently called for40 gigawatts of offshore windcapacity to be built in UK waters by 2030. If achieved, it would be one of the biggest British maritime deployments since the Battle of Trafalgar. Meanwhile, the European Union has targeted some than300 gigawattsof offshore capacity by 2050.

Joe Bidens climate advisors are calling for the immediate approval of a slew of pending offshore wind projects. In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo is calling for 9 gigawatts ofoffshore wind capacity to be built by 2035.Other East Coast governors are also floating multi-gigawatt offshore plans. In all, according toa report issued by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management last June approximately 22 gigawatts of Atlantic offshore wind development are reasonably foreseeablealong the East Coast.

Heres some advice: Take all of these offshore plans with a large grain of sea salt.

The history of offshore wind in domestic waters is replete with canceled plans yes, Cape Wind, Im talking about you cost overruns, cabling problems, and permit delays. Furthermore, offshore wind continues to be one of the most expensive forms of electricity generation. That high-priced juice will cost ratepayers untold billions of dollars over the coming years. That means higher-cost electricity for low- and middle-income consumers. The impact will be particularly hard in northeastern states like New York and in New England, where consumers already endure some of the highest electricity prices in the country.

Finally, building gigawatt-scale offshore wind will be lousy for the oceans, navigation, and marine life. The forecast buildout of offshore wind in the U.S. will require industrializing vast swaths of some of the most heavily fished and navigated waters in North America. It will require anchoring thousands of offshore platforms along the Eastern Seaboard, which could interfere with marine mammal migration and wreak navigational havoc during a hurricane, major storm, or oil spill. It will also add yet more noise pollution to the already-noisy ocean.

Before delving into those issues, its worth remembering why offshore wind has become such a priority for states like New York. The answer is simple: Rural New York is in a full-scale uprising that is halting the growth of several proposed solar and wind projects, including ones proposed by Invenergy and Apex Clean Energy.

In 2018,Anne Reynolds, the executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, explained why the backlash is occurring: I personally think the arguments against wind energy are because people dont want to see the turbines.So many rural New Yorkers dont want to see the turbines that state officials in Albany are in the process of stripping local governments of their home rule authority over the approval and siting of renewable projects (Just for a moment, imagine if the state government was doing the same for oil and gas drilling. If that would happen, perhaps theNew York Times NYT would cover the backlash against wind in New York.)

With surging friction onshore, the renewable industry wants to set anchor in saltwater. But that effort has been met with fierce headwinds. Over the last two decades, numerous offshore projects, including the ill-fated468-megawatt Cape Wind projecthave been scuttled, delayed, blown off course, or abandoned.

In California, New York, Massachusetts, and other coastal states, the siting approval process has been protracted and often hinges around the condition that, if built, the giant seabird-killing machines will not be visible from beach-front swankiendas in Malibu, Montauk, and Hyannisport.

The Hyannisport story is instructive. In 2001, the backers of Cape Wind filed their first permit application. It would become one of the most contentious energy projects of any kind in US history. The backers of Cape Wind filed their first permit application in 2001. Despite getting environmental approvals from the federal government, and the backing of many elected officials in Massachusetts, the project faced enormous opposition, including from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose family owns a modest compound in Hyannisport. Cape Windwas officially deep-sixed in 2015. Since then, Massachusetts legislators have floated a plan to increase theoffshore target to 5.6 gigawatts, or roughly a dozen projects the size of the scuttled Cape Wind.

The promise of offshore wind has long lain just over the horizon.In 2010, Google announced the Atlantic Wind Connection, an offshore transmission project that aimed to connect 6,000 megawatts of offshore wind capacity. Back then, Google GOOG GOOG said, We believe in investing in projects that makegood business sense and further the development of renewable energy.Google (now Alphabet) and three other partners, including Marubeni Corporation, said they would spend some $5 billion on the project. But as one summary put it: The proposal ran into significantregulatory and financial hurdlesbefore it fell apart.

In 2011, then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar spoke ata conference sponsoredby the American Wind Energy Association at which he declared From Texas to Oregon, to up and down the Atlantic Coast, theres movement on offshore wind. He continued, sayingthe Obama administration had set an ambitious but achievable goal of deploying 10 gigawatts - thats 10,000 megawatts - of offshore wind generating capacity by 2020 and 54 gigawatts by 2030.

How has that worked? Well, ten years after Salazars speech, the US has five turbines offshore with a total of capacity of 30 megawatts or some 9,970 megawatts short of that ambitious but achievable goal laid out in 2011.

In 2017, Dominion Resources said that after losing some $40 million in federal subsidies in 2016, it would be delaying a 12-megawatt offshore wind project until 2021 at the earliest.One challenge facing offshore wind development is itscomplex and costly installation and maintenancewhen compared to onshore wind, the company said.

The only offshore wind project in US waters is the Block Island project off the coast of Rhode Island. That projectbegan producing power in 2017. But significant problems have already emerged and the owners of the 30-megawatt project have been forced to shut the turbines down while contractors re-bury the power cable that brought the juice to shore. The initial phase of re-burying it willtotal more than $30 million. Orsted, the company that now owns the project, has refusedto disclose the total cost of the cable reburyingeffort.

Offshore wind hit another shoal last November when the federal environmental impact assessment for the 800-megawatt Vineyard Wind project located a few dozen miles east of Long Island,was delayed yet again.In December, the backers of Vineyard Wind Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners and Avangrid, a subsidiary of Spanish utility Iberdrola SA, which has aggressively pursued renewable projects in the United States over the past few years withdrew their permit application.

The high cost of offshore wind will impose a regressive tax on low- and middle-income consumers. As economist Jonathan Lesser pointed out in theNew York Postlast year, the electricity to be produced from two of the projects being slated for New York waters Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind will cost about $100 per megawatt-hour. Thats high-priced juice, particularly when you consider that the average cost of wholesale electricity in New York in 2019, according tothe New York Independent System Operator, was about $33, a record low.

In a separate piece, for Real Clear Energy in September,Lesser noted thatthe initial price of juice from the Southfork Wind Project, to be built off the coast of Long Island, starts at a whopping $160 per megawatt-hour, or roughly five times the average wholesale price in New York. Lesser concluded that offshore wind means higher-priced electricity for consumers and businesses and fewer dollars to spend or invest.

The cost of offshore wind isnt limited to higher electricity prices. Several East Coast states have pledged big subsidies in the form of infrastructure.New York state has pledged$200 million in tax dollarsto make port improvements for offshore wind.

Finally, the environmental impacts and dangers to navigation posed by offshore wind cannot be ignored.Indeed,the number of offshore platforms being proposed for wind energy production boggles the imagination. Today, the global hydrocarbon sector operates about 6,000 offshore oil and gas platforms. If the EU follows through with its plans to install 300 gigawatts, it would require assuming each turbine is 10 megawatts installing 30,000 offshore platforms in European waters. Thus, Europes offshore wind industry, by itself, could soon havefive times as many offshore platforms as the entire global oil and gas sector.

The potential impact on American offshore is also gobsmackingly large. The U.S. Gulf of Mexico, which is one of the most productive offshore oil and gas provinces on the planet, hasabout 1,900 platforms.

According to an October article inE&E News,Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia, have set goals for offshore wind totaling some28.5 gigawatts and another 7.5 gigawatts is being targeted. If those states want 36 gigawatts of capacity, itwill require installing about 3,600 offshore platforms.Thus, if the offshore wind promoters have their way, the Eastern Seaboard alone could soon be carpeted with nearly twice as many offshore platforms as are now in the Gulf of Mexico.

One of the leases will put dozens of wind turbines smack on top of one of thebest scallop and squid fisheries on the Eastern Seaboard. Numerous groups, including the Fisheries Survival Fund, Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, as well as the Bonackers, a small group of fisherman whose roots on Long Island go back centuries, are adamantly opposed to the wind projects slated for the region. On Friday morning, Bonnie Brady, the executive director of the Long Island Commercial Fishing Association, and a board member of the Responsible Offshore Development Alliance, told me that the long-term environmental impact of the proposed projects isnt well understood. We know these giant machines change wind patterns and they could change marine migration patterns. Lets do the science before we destroy the ocean and our ocean food supply.

The draft environmental impact statement for Vineyard Wind, which was released in June, said Major direct impacts on navigation could occur due to the presence of structures needed for the project. It also said, Major cumulative effectscould occur on commercial fisheries.

The flood of wind turbines will also add moreanthropogenic noise to the oceans, a problem that was spotlighted this week by a new academic paper. The New York Times reported, humans and their ships, seismic surveys, air guns, pile drivers, dynamite fishing, drilling platforms, speedboats and even surfing have made the ocean an unbearably noisy place for marine life, according to a sweeping review of the prevalence and intensity of the impacts of anthropogenic ocean noise publishedon Thursdayin the journal Science.The paper, a collaboration among 25 authors from across the globe and various fields of marine acoustics, is the largest synthesis of evidence on the effects of oceanic noise pollution.

A new paper published in Science, "The soundscape of the Anthropocene ocean," underscored the ... [+] growing problem of marine noise pollution.

To understand what the offshore wind juggernaut might mean for our oceans, I askedJesse Ausubel, the director of the program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University, for a comment. Ausubel is among the worlds foremost experts on the ocean and the creatures that live in it. To cite just one example, he was one of theearly proponentsof theCensus of Marine Life, a 10-year, multi-nation project that resulted in some 540 expeditions that engaged some 2,700 scientists who discovered more than 1,000 new marine species and have several thousand more waiting to be described. (For more on that seethis video.)

In an email, Ausubel told me that we humans are creating a fast-growing ocean of things that is populating the water column from floor to surface. He said the EUs plans for 300 gigawatts of wind capacity would alone require acreage of about 100,000 square kilometers or about two-thirds the surface of the Baltic or Black Seas or a bit less than half the land area of Great Britain plus Ireland. He concluded, Environmentalists have not yet grasped the massive industrialization of the oceans now underway and proposed.

Back in 2011, Salazar declared that offshore wind energy was America's new energy frontier. A decade later, Americas offshore wind potential is still just that, potential. If offshore wind does achieve a huge expansion under Joe Biden, the invoice for that expansion will be equally huge and the price impacts will be felt most acutely by low- and middle-income Americans who will struggle to pay their electricity bills.

If the advisors on Bidens climate team are serious about protecting the environment, now would be a good time for them to reconsider the massive industrialization of the oceans that is now underway. It might even make them think about preventing Americas existing fleet of nuclear reactors from being prematurely shuttered.

Originally posted here:

Offshore Wind Plans Will Drive Up Electricity Prices And Require Massive Industrialization Of The Oceans - Forbes

Owaki/Kulla | The Image Bank | Getty Images

Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy has been given the nod to supply and install turbines for the 6.5 billion (around $9 billion) East Anglia Hub, a major offshore wind development planned for waters off the east coast of England.

In a statement Tuesday, project developer Scottish Power Renewables said the plan was to use over 200 "next generation turbines" for the scheme which, if fully realized, will consist of the East Anglia ONE North, East Anglia TWO and East Anglia THREE facilities.

SPR did not provide specific details of the turbines slated to be used by the wind farms but described them as "some of the world's most powerful and productive."

According to the firm, which is part of the Iberdrola Group, the East Anglia Hub will be able to produce as much as 3.1 gigawatts (GW) of renewable energy, powering millions of homes in the process.

Planning consent has been granted for East Anglia THREE, while planning applications for the other two projects are in the process of being examined. If the project progresses smoothly, construction will start in 2023 and wrap up in 2026.

The East Anglia Hub is one of several large-scale offshore wind projects being planned for the U.K., where authorities want to increase offshore wind capacity to 40 GW by the year 2030. The U.K.'s operational offshore wind capacity currently stands at a little over 10.4 GW.

Last October, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he wanted the country to become the "world leader in low cost clean power generation."

Other projects in the pipeline include the Dogger Bank Wind Farm, which will be located in waters off the northeast coast of England and have a capacity of 3.6 GW.

Current facilities in operation include Hornsea One, in waters off Yorkshire, England, which has a capacity of 1.2 GW.

The U.K. is not the only country where wind power is starting to play an increasingly important role. On Tuesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said daily electricity generation from wind hit a record 1.76 million megawatt-hours on December 23, 2020.

This, the EIA added, represented "about 17% of total electricity generation on that day."

"On average, EIA estimates that wind accounted for 9% of U.S. electricity generation in 2020," it went on to state.

When it comes to offshore wind, America still has some ways to go before it catches up with the U.K.

The first offshore wind farm in the U.S., the 30 megawatt, five turbine Block Island Wind Farm, only started commercial operations at the end of 2016.

Change is coming, however, with a number of significant projects now planned for waters off the East Coast.

These include the Empire Wind and Beacon Wind projects, which are backed by oil and gas giants Equinor and BP.

More here:

Siemens Energy unit picked to install 'next generation turbines' at $9 billion offshore wind hub - CNBC

Flip a switch and the lights come on. Thats what Americans expect, thanks to an electricity grid that feeds energy from renewable and traditional sources into millions of homes and businesses.

The wind turbines starting to go up in waters off the nations shores have the potential to provide abundant clean energy to heavily populated coastal cities and the larger national grid. But first, the power they generate must be relayed across many miles of ocean waters and coastline, using transmission systems that were not designed to handle large amounts of power being transmitted from offshore.

Illustration by Josh Bauer, NREL

The U.S. Department of Energys (DOEs) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has launched plans to develop the technologies and strategies needed to integrate the coming wave of offshore wind installations into the grid. The laboratorys success with integration from its world-renowned work on utility-scale renewable energy systems to its comprehensive vision for offshore wind development and collaboration with industry partners is steering efforts to deliver power efficiently and affordably from offshore plants.

Experience integrating widely distributed, land-based renewable sources in the United States and offshore wind in Europe indicates that coordinating transmission over large regions achieves economies of scale and operational efficiencies, which can deliver considerable cost savings, said NREL Offshore Wind Grid Integration Lead Melinda Marquis. Challenges include cost allocation and technical demands posed by offshore locations.

Building on the earlier DOE National Offshore Wind Energy Grid Interconnection Study (NOWEGIS), NREL plans to examine a range of scenarios for integrating offshore wind into the larger grid by assessing economic, reliability, operational, and stability factors. Researchers are looking at the interplay among transmission configurations and technologies, grid integration requirements, energy storage options, and other renewable energy sources.

Outcomes of this research will give government and industry decision-makers the validated scientific data and tools needed to establish resilient and market-competitive offshore wind power plants that deliver the greatest possible benefits to the power grid, industry stakeholders, ratepayers, and the environment.

NRELs research portfolio takes an integrated, whole-system approach to maximize the performance, efficiency, and impact of renewable energy, from single components to power plants and regional power grids. By quantifying what offshore wind plants can contribute to a larger regional or national network of energy solutions, researchers can help stakeholders make sure they are setting the right research, investment, and policy priorities.

Until now, utilities and offshore developers have typically considered the transmission interconnection for each wind plant individually. This project-specific approach often means developers miss opportunities to pool resources and knowledge across shared networks covering larger regions, which can improve financial viability, technical performance, and potential for long-term success.

Large-scale development of dozens of offshore wind projects will require concerted integration of the power generation mix, including storage, said NREL Offshore Wind Platform Lead Walt Musial. Not only do the technologies have to work together, but regional collaborations across larger geographic regions also may be necessary for optimal system reliability and affordability.

Policy commitments have been made to add 30 gigawatts equivalent to approximately 3% of current U.S. generation capacity in offshore wind generation to the grid by 2035. Many planned offshore projects are located on the North Atlantic Coast, but interest is growing in all regions of the United States, and there is great potential for synergistic development and economies of scale.

Although electric utility stakeholders recognize the importance of minimizing transmission costs, it can be difficult to determine how to spread accountability across utilities, state governments, ratepayers, and developers. If these entities can devise a way to share responsibilities such as planning for shared interconnection lines and transmission line financing, it could increase grid reliability, resilience, and efficiency; reduce project costs by as much as 10%18%; and diminish conflicts with commercial fishing activity.

States are beginning to recognize that regional collaboration on offshore wind transmission planning can stretch budgets and strengthen infrastructure. The New Jersey State Legislature recently voted to adopt a coordinated approach by integrating offshore developments and related onshore upgrades with the regional grid operators planning process.

NREL researchers conduct and transmission modeling studies that evaluate the impacts of various renewable build-out scenarios on reliability, congestion, capacity value, resiliency, and related economic factors. Staff collaborate with developers, operators, utilities, government agencies, other research organizations, and coastal communities to examine offshore wind transmission options from multiple perspectives.

Offshore wind transmission requires complex technologies that include offshore turbines, equipment to relay that power to the shore, and onshore points of grid interconnection. These connection points must be placed at locations in the larger electric grid where the power can be distributed to homes and businesses along the coast.

Looking at how these components work together as a system, we can optimize offshore winds contributions to the grid, said NREL Wind Grid Integration Lead David Corbus. We can find innovative ways to overcome technology challenges specific to offshore installations, while improving the reliability, resilience, and performance of the overall grid.

NREL researchers evaluate new technology and devise control methods to optimize integration of renewable energy sources with the grid. For instance, the standard approach of connecting offshore projects to existing onshore points of interconnection is inefficient and does little to improve grid reliability.

NREL is exploring innovative, multiterminal and advanced high-voltage alternating/direct-current (HVAC/HVDC) options capable of handling large-scale transmission, operating reliably despite extreme conditions related to ocean depths and climate, and reducing barriers to commercial fishing activity. The European Union has already developed some key technologies for these multiterminal systems, especially for HVDC transmission, but research is still needed to confirm the compatibility of offshore and onshore components, as well as the effects of multiterminal HVDC strategies on grid control, operation, reliability, and resiliency.

NRELsAdvanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) research platform, Flatirons Campus, and Energy Systems Integration Facilityprovide world-class, high-performance computing resources and experimental laboratories for putting these innovative offshore wind transmission technologies and strategies through their paces in various combinations, configurations, and scenarios. Sophisticated NREL-created software tools make it possible for researchers to build models and simulate performance based on the laboratorys formidable collections of real-world data.

Work by NREL and its partners from recommending options for pinpointing lease areas to devising effective strategies for grid integration continues to propel the development of offshore wind. The laboratory has developed a 10-year strategic plan for its offshore wind integration research that calls for ongoing studies in the areas of generation, transmission, storage, operation, demand, stability, and reliability.

The team is working to break down region-specific barriers to offshore wind transmission. Earthquakes, deep undersea canyons, and shortcomings in existing onshore infrastructure present complications for transmission systems along the Pacific Coast. Transmission systems on the South Atlantic Coast and in the Gulf of Mexico must contend with hurricanes and adapt to different business models less accustomed to renewable energy integration. Freezing waters and grid capacity limits also pose unique challenges in the Great Lakes.

In addition to extensive study of East Coast offshore wind scenarios, NREL is assessing offshore winds potential to help Hawaii work toward its goal of 100% renewable energy by 2045. Future NREL studies will look more closely at transmission backbone design options, where a coastal transmission grid is established that can service multiple states and offshore wind projects.

Grid integration researchers are also looking at energy storage options to address power generation fluctuations in hybrid systems capable of reliably matching load requirements using offshore wind, land-based wind, solar energy, and other renewable and traditional sources.

To tackle offshore wind grid integration challenges, NREL has joined forces with partners including the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), Business Network for Offshore Wind (BNOW), California Independent System Operator (CAISO), California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), California Energy Commission (CEC), New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), ISO-New England (ISO-NE), New York ISO (NYISO), Pennsylvania New Jersey Maryland Power Pool (PJM), and National Offshore Wind Research and Development Consortium (NOWRDC).

The value of offshore wind may increase once it is integrated with the grid and other renewable generation sources, Musial said. Offshore wind can help diversify the electric power sector and complement other renewable sources to provide effective, affordable electricity for homes, businesses, and the growing electric vehicle fleet.

This is one in aseries of articleson NRELs offshore wind R&D. Learn more about the laboratorysoffshore,land-based, anddistributedwind research, along withpartnershipopportunities.

Courtesy of NREL

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US Offshore Wind Potential Relies On Intelligent Grid Integration - CleanTechnica

Stena IceMAX, the world's first dynamically positioned, dual mast ice-class drillship (photo courtesy of Stena Drilling)

By The Maritime Executive 02-04-2021 01:03:12

In a first of its kind effort for the offshore exploration sector, Stena Drilling announced that it is establishing the framework for what they are calling decarbonization exploration. Working with UK-based dCarbonX they are looking to develop the new sector to realize opportunities linked to the global energy transformation.

Stena, an independent drilling contractor that has been developing new technologies including an ice-class drillship, signed a strategic framework agreement with dCarbonX, a UK start-up founded in 2020 focusing on geothermal, subsurface energy storage, and carbon sequestration. The companies said they will work together to engineer solutions to discover and develop subsurface assets for combinations of geothermal energy, molecular energy storage, and carbon sequestration.

This innovative partnership dovetails well with the work Stena is doing in sustainability, research into cleaner fuels and emissions reduction, said Erik Ronsberg, CEO of Stena Drilling. By employing the skills that our company has built up over the years and utilizing our drilling units to explore for geothermal energy, CO2 and other gas storage locations which dCarbonX have identified, we will be able to play a positive part as the first Decarbonization Exploration Driller working towards a low carbon future.

While geothermal exploration is an established business, expanding the sector into other opportunities connected to the broader efforts at sustainability and energy transition related to decarbonization might provide a new lifeline in the offshore sector. The offshore industry, including exploration and drilling operators, have been hard hit by the long-term downturn in the traditional oil sector.

Stena Drilling is the obvious strategic partner for our future offshore Decarbonization Exploration activities given its world class fleet of modern drillships and semi-submersible offshore drilling units, said Tony OReilly, CEO of dCarbonX. Stenas corporate commitment and demonstrated track record in safety, environmental stewardship, and innovation are further compelling reasons for this partnership. We look forward to working with Stena on delivering our exciting forward program of GeoEnergy projects.

Stena Drilling, which is a subsidiary of Stena AB, operates four ultra-deep water drillships and two semi-submersible midwater drilling rigs.

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Stena Drilling Seeks to Expand Offshore Drilling into Decarbonization - The Maritime Executive

February 5, 2021

Credit: C-bed/MarineTraffic.com

Offshore accommodation provider C-bed has said it has won two contracts for its Service Operation Vessel (SOV) Wind Innovation to support rsted's offshore wind projects in the UK.

"With a double contract to support offshore wind developments in the UK, C-bed secures full activity into 2022 for its Service Operation Vessel (SOV), Wind Innovation," C-bed said.

The Wind Innovation SOV offers 80 single cabins and option of a total of 105 guests living on board.

Per C-bed, wind Innovation is already in full operation on the first of the two assignments with rsted at the Hornsea One offshore wind farm. During March, Wind Innovation will then continue to the second and more extensive cable termination project at the Hornsea Two offshore wind farm.

"Providing the daily logistics and accommodation for the Hornsea Two offshore workers becomes C-beds 28th individual offshore project and at the same time marks an industry landmark," C-bed said.

Hornsea Two, which is located 89km off the Yorkshire coast and will span an offshore area of 462km, becomes the Worlds largest offshore wind farm once complete in 2022. Hornsea Two will have a capacity of 1.4GW, enough to provide clean power to well over 1.3 million homes.

During the project, C-bed will use the Port of Immingham as a base port for crew change and loading of fresh supplies.

Offshore installation works kicked off last year at the Hornsea Two project. In total, 165 monopiles and transition pieces will be installed at sea in preparation for the sites 8.4 MW turbines. With a height from sea level to blade tip of 204 m, the turbines will also feature new 82 m long blades.

Hornsea Two

Credit: rsted

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C-bed Wins Offshore Accommodation Deal with rsted in UK - Offshore Engineer

Most of the ocean is unknown. Yet we know that the most challenging environments on the planet reside in it. Understanding the ocean in its totality is a key component for the sustainable development of human activities and for the mitigation of climate change, as proclaimed by the United Nations. We are glad to share our perspective about the role of soft robots in ocean exploration and offshore operations at the outset of the ocean decade (2021-2030).

In this study of the Soft Systems Group (part of The School of Engineering at The University of Edinburgh), we focus on the two ends of the water column: the abyss and the surface. The former is mostly unexplored, containing unknown physical, biological and chemical properties; the latter is where industrial offshore activities take place, and where human operators face dangerous environmental conditions.

The analysis of recent developments in soft robotics brought to light their potential in solving some of the challenges that industry and scientists are facing at sea. The paper offers a discussion about how we can use the latest technological advances in soft robotics to overcome the limitations of existing technology. We synthesise the crucial characteristics that future marine robots should include.

Today we know that industrial growth needs to be supported by deep environmental and technological knowledge in order to develop human activities in a sustainable manner. Therefore, the remotest areas of the ocean constitute a common frontier for oceanography, robotics and offshore industry. The first challenge then is to create an interdisciplinary space where marine scientists, ocean engineers, roboticists and industry can communicate.

The offshore renewable energy sector is growing fast. By definition, wind and wave energy is better sourced from areas of the seas with a high energy content, which translates into wave dominated environments. In such conditions, operating in the vicinity of an offshore platform is dangerous for personnel and potentially destructive for traditional robots.

Recent development in soft robotics unveiled novel, bio-inspired maneuvering techniques, fluidic logic data logging capabilities and unprecedented dexterity. These characteristics would enable data collection, maintenance and repair interventions, unfeasible with rigid robots.

Traditional devices, often tethered, rigid and with limited activity range, cannot tackle the environmental conditions where ocean exploration is needed the most. The devices needed for ocean exploration require an innovative payload and delicate sampling capabilities. Soft sensors and soft gripping techniques are optimum candidates to push ocean exploration into fragile and unknown areas that require delicate sampling and gentle navigation. The inherent compliance of soft robots also protects the environment and the payload from damage. More importantly, recent studies have highlighted the potential for the manufacturing of soft robots to be entirely biocompatible and, hence, to minimise the impact on the natural environment in case of loss or mass deployment.

In a nutshell, soft robots for marine exploration and offshore deployment offer the advantage, over traditional devices, of novel navigation and manipulation techniques, unprecedented sensing and sampling capabilities, biocompatibility and novel memory and data logging methods. With this study we wish to invite a multidisciplinary approach in order to create novel sustainable soft systems.

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Soft robots for ocean exploration and offshore operations: A perspective - Robohub