SPECIAL REPORT
How Offshore Oil & Gas Can Retool to Supply the Offshore Wind Industry The Block Island Wind Farm, currently under construction in U.S. waters is the first offshore wind farm in the United States but it won’t be the last. At 30-MW the US $290 million project is on the small side for offshore wind. In Europe, where offshore wind is a well-established industry, the cost to build these behemoths can run far above the US $1 billion mark. Can companies that currently supply the offshore oil and gas industry find pathways to enter this new billion-dollar market? We believe so and our guide begins to showcase the intricacies of this exciting new industry for the U.S. —Jennifer Runyon, Chief Editor, Renewable Energy World
REPRINTED WITH REVISIONS TO FORMAT FROM RENEWABLE ENERGY WORLD MAGAZINE. COPYRIGHT 2016 BY PENNWELL CORPORATION.
What Opportunities Exist for Technology Transfer from Offshore Oil & Gas to Offshore Wind?
AWEA 2016 Showcases Knowledge Transfer from Offshore Oil and Gas to Wind Senator Landrieu Suggests More ‘Common Sense’ Approach for Offshore Oil, Gas, Wind Regulation Energy from Offshore: Engineering Firm Transitions Expertise from Offshore Oil to Offshore Wind
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 26, 2016
What Opportunities Exist for Technology Transfer from Offshore Oil & Gas to Offshore Wind? By Renewable Energy World Editors
ACCORDING TO THE American Oil and Gas Historical Society, the U.S. offshore
oil and natural gas industry began in the Pacific Ocean more than 100 years ago. The organization said that it wasn’t until 1947 that a company attempted to drill outside the sight of land. Today, the burgeoning U.S. offshore wind industry is just getting started with a small project off the coast of Rhode Island. Dong Energy, an experienced offshore wind developer in North-western Europe, in February agreed to take over a lease that could potentially lead to more than 1 GW of offshore wind energy capacity off the Atlantic coast. The parallels between offshore oil and wind are plenty. Each technology requires anchoring heavy Image: Keystone delivered small light, jacket structures that could be lifted from a ship to be installed in place rather than barged or floated in place for Block Island wind project. Credit: Keystone Engineering.
2 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
What Opportunities Exist for Technology Transfer from Offshore Oil & Gas to Offshore Wind?
equipment to the seabed or figuring out how to stabilize it through f lotation. Each relies on cabling or piping to transport the product. Each needs specialized vessels equipped to transport people and supplies to locations far out to sea. Additional similarities include permitting, environmental concerns, dealing with opposition and many more. Read the responses below to hear industry experts answer the question: What Opportunities Exist for Technology Transfer from Offshore Oil & Gas to Offshore Wind? Jendrik Odenwald, Owner, General Manager & Marine Surveyor, Brager Solutions
We have been observing the German offshore wind industry since 2009 when the projects got bigger and were springing up like mushrooms due to high financial incentives they received. The dynamic lead to the fact — as we noticed — that the whole industry basically started from scratch. Offshore wind farm operating companies were set up by German Energy supplying companies from nothing. The development and construction of wind turbines and the building of wind farms was so highly specialized and specifically engineered that there was no use for existing vessels or equipment from the oil and gas industry. The German government’s regulations, decisions and money flow pushed the offshore wind industry into a vacuum that created an urgent need for knowledge, people and vessels and the capacities are there to supply the market sufficiently. With the current oil and gas crisis it will be interesting to see whether and how oil and gas vessel operators will move into the wind market to compensate for their decreased revenues and how the offshore wind industry will react. This could potentially bring about the first stress test for the most highly financed wind vessel operators.
3 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
What Opportunities Exist for Technology Transfer from Offshore Oil & Gas to Offshore Wind?
Doug Friday, Chief Executive Officer, Expede
Probably the most obvious response to this question is the undertaking of offshore vessel operations and seabed engineering. Indeed, much can be learned from the many years of building offshore structures, from the development of engineering standards for seabed stability and seismic activity through to offshore vessel logistics and installation methodologies. The oil and gas industry does however have far more to offer. As energy practitioners, it is our responsibility to look at the total lifecycle of our energy solution and to ensure that we are applying the most efficient and effective method of development. Looking beyond the issue of fossil fuels we should look to adopt the best practices of our longstanding energy forbears. Although learnings from installation and engineering methods bring value, the greatest contribution the oil and gas sector can make to the offshore wind industry is a highly evolved integrated strategy towards energy developments. From approaches for risk management, project execution methodologies through to the management of personnel safety and the environment. Over the course of many years, the industry has developed a highly effective approach to overall system development. The offshore wind industry should adapt this approach to its needs to produce a more efficient project with high safety standards and low local environmental impact. David Currie, CEO, JDR and Member of the Offshore Wind Energy Council
We believe the oil and gas sector has a significant amount to offer the offshore wind industry — not just in terms of technology transfer, but knowledge transfer too. Since its inception, the oil and gas sector has continually pushed the boundaries with regards to design and engineering, and today operates to the highest standards of health, safety and quality. 4 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
What Opportunities Exist for Technology Transfer from Offshore Oil & Gas to Offshore Wind?
At JDR, we’ve found that many of the lessons we’ve learned from solving technical challenges related to operating in the world’s harshest and most remote environments are equally applicable to offshore wind. As a result, we’ve been able to apply our experience in designing, engineering and manufacturing subsea cables and umbilicals for the global oil and gas industry, to develop pioneering solutions for renewables customers, while retaining our proven design and technical reliability. However, technology and knowledge transfer go both ways and in today’s low oil price environment, we believe that opportunities also exist for the renewables sector to share best practices and lessons learned — particularly around cost reduction and operational efficiency. Benj Sykes, Head of Asset Management and UK Country Manager for Offshore Wind, DONG Energy
Installation techniques, personnel transfer, risk management and of course safety, are all areas where companies can use their oil and gas experience for the benefit of offshore wind operations. And as companies build experience in installing and operating offshore wind farms, there is now technology transfer back to oil and gas, not least as a result of the innovation that has been driven by the need to reduce the cost of electricity from offshore wind as the sector matures. DONG Energy’s roots can be found elsewhere in the energy sector with its history established in managing oil and gas resources in the Danish sector of the North Sea, providing many years of experience in working offshore. This heritage of working out at sea in some of the most challenging and inhospitable conditions has been key to the growth of the company’s offshore wind business, with knowledge, insight and expertise that my firm has accumulated over decades applied to this new growing industry. 5 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
What Opportunities Exist for Technology Transfer from Offshore Oil & Gas to Offshore Wind?
Jo Shailes, Vice President of Marketing, Trelleborg Offshore
The offshore oil industry can bring four main lessons to the offshore wind industry. First, proven technologies and experience from offshore applications should be considered and tailored for offshore wind applications. Secondly, safety and compliance levels should be matched at the forefront of all design, manufacturing and installations. Third, as is the case with oil, never stop innovating and finding new ways to push the boundaries. And finally, the best solution is achieved when suppliers’ and customers’ engineers work shoulder-to-shoulder. We find that proven expertise and a passion for innovative polymer engineering in the offshore oil and gas sector accelerates performance for our customers in renewables. Ben Foley, General Manager, Renewables, Keystone Engineering
Skilled engineers can transfer their knowledge of postdesign fabrication and installation engineering for the oil and gas sector to the design of offshore wind foundations. For example, our firm leveraged its extensive offshore engineering knowledge to design the substructures for the Block Island Wind Farm (the first offshore wind farm in the U.S.) by adapting the steel jacket foundations used in the oil and gas industry as the design-basis for the deep-water wind turbine support structures. We used offshore engineering software to deliver an alternative to typical offshore wind monopile foundations that are limited to shallower water depths and smaller wind turbine generators and incorporated load models from the turbine generator designer to optimize the design of the total structure and ensure safe operation under a wide range of weather conditions, including tropical systems. The resulting foundation is designed to 6 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED [DATE]
withstand the 100-year hurricane and checked for robustness against the 1,000-year hurricane. The foundation requires less steel than a comparable foundation and can operate in a much wider weather window commonly found far off the Northeast coast of the United States. Parvinder Jhita, Senior Product Manager, Offshore, Bentley Systems
Design and analysis software can support both the offshore oil and gas and wind farm industries enabling engineers to model any type of offshore structural system and provide optimal design against environmental loads, such as waves, wind, and current in addition to mechanical loads from wind turbines. Engineers can use software to explore the effects of fatigue, ship impact loads, transportation, and installation and use it to provide options for safe, cost-effective solutions that potentially can save many hours of design time. Design and analysis software, such as Bentley’s SACs can be integrated with wellestablished turbine manufacturer simulation software for a fully coupled analysis. This integration allows users to accurately simulate the loads on a wind turbine platform structure and enables engineers to optimize these steel structures for cost, installation weight, and strength. James Ritchie, Chief Operating Officer, Tekmar Energy
Many, if done right and by respecting the differences between both markets as each offer unique challenges and opportunity. Oil & gas has always driven a quality and HSE demand first, which offshore wind regrettably lacked in the early years. Thankfully, this has changed through learning vital lessons from oil & gas while still pushing innovation to achieve cost reduction.
7 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
What Opportunities Exist for Technology Transfer from Offshore Oil & Gas to Offshore Wind?
There was a legacy of the oil & gas influence where thoughts of cable protection were of secondary importance. This may have been understandable when the oil pipeline itself took precedence but in offshore wind, the power cable’s integrity is paramount. As the offshore wind industry continues to look at ways of reducing costs and inefficiencies, developers are increasingly realizing the benefits of bringing in the cable protection supplier at an earlier date. Closer engagement at the start minimizes installation times by enabling the most effective techniques to be picked rather than working around the sole method available for the job. Involvement in the foundation design stages means we can fully optimize the protection system’s design and make innovations which eliminate the need to use a steel J-tube. This approach can lead to savings in excess of hundreds of thousands of dollars for each turbine installed while the importance of these subsea cables to windfarms has led to advancements in protection systems that are now bringing benefits beyond offshore wind.
8 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED MAY 24, 2016
AWEA 2016 Showcases Knowledge Transfer from Offshore Oil and Gas to Wind By Jennifer Runyon, Chief Editor
AT THE AWEA WINDPOWER 2016 conference, experts from the offshore oil and
gas and offshore wind industry gathered to learn how the two sectors can work together to help the burgeoning offshore wind industry in the U.S. Stephanie McClellan, Special Initiative on Offshore Wind opened the session. “If we act on this, if we get it right, if we can convert know-how and experience, we are going to ramp up offshore wind in the U.S. We’re visibly making the case for the viability of offshore wind,” she said. Chris Van Beek is President of Deepwater Wind, the company developing the first offshore wind farm in the U.S., the 30-MW project off the coast of Rhode Island. Van Beek explained Deepwater Wind’s process for construction of the offshore wind farm, one that involves many different contracts with many different engineering 9 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
AWEA 2016 Showcases Knowledge Transfer from Offshore Oil and Gas to Wind
companies. Broadly the company looked for four different project managers: a foundation manager, a transmission manager, a turbine manager and a logistics manager. Overall the 30-MW project will create about 1000 jobs during the two years it will take to build it. Annegrethe Jeppesen, lead contract manager for DONG Energy, the largest developer of offshore wind farms in Europe, said that by 2020, DONG will have built more than 6 GW of offshore wind capacity in Europe.
Senator Landrieu Suggests More ‘Common Sense’ Approach Be Applied to Offshore Oil, Gas and Wind Regulations By Jennifer Runyon, Chief Editor
A key theme that emerged during the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) WINDPOWER 2016 tradeshow was how people, companies and products are transitioning from the oil and gas industry into the wind industry. No doubt the downturn in oil prices and the show’s
“We would like to copy that story in the U.S.,” she said. Jeppesen said there is a huge potential for the offshore oil and gas industry in the U.S. based on how DONG works with offshore oil and gas in the EU. For offshore wind, cost reduction is key, and both Van Beek and Jeppesen said that the need to standardize manufacturing,
location in Louisiana are two reasons for the heightened interest in moving from one energy industry into another. An oil and gas lawyer remarked that he was at the show looking for a job in the wind industry
10 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
AWEA 2016 Showcases Knowledge Transfer from Offshore Oil and Gas to Wind
contracts, planning, etc., is very important. According to Jeppesen serial manufacturing is more than 40 percent ahead on price than companies doing on-offs. Jeppesen said that early on the company stated publicly that it wanted to bring the installed cost of offshore wind capacity to €100 [US $111] per MW. DONG then worked with its entire supply chain to figure out how to reduce costs. “And we are nearly there,” she said. Her advice to potential partners in the U.S. was very straightforward: “You need to be there for the long term. Collaborate with us, show us transparency in your costs so we can help you improve,” she said. Solving the logistics and transport problem is another huge challenge said presenters. This is a particularly big issue in the U.S. because manufacturers of equipment are not located close to ports and some of the
because he was tired of the “boom and bust cycle” that has plagued the oil market for years. With a five-year PTC in place for wind power, hopefully its boom and bust cycles are over. If companies can bring down costs enough by 2021, wind power should be well-positioned to grow steadily into 2030 and beyond. In an interview, former Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu said there is “a lot of synergy to be had between those industries.” She added, “some of the companies that I’ve met here are doing that transition as we speak.” For years the renewable energy industry pointed to subsidies that fossil fuels receive enviously. Could the movement of companies and people from oil to wind spur oil lobbyists to start lobbying for wind? “If the wind folks are having regulatory issues, well join the club, because the oil and gas folks are having regulatory issues,” Landrieu said. “Maybe we can ask for more common sense to be applied with the regulatory agencies when dealing with both offshore oil and gas as well as offshore wind.” One regulator, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) said that it has recently broken down some of the fences between the fossil and renewable sides of its organization.
11 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
AWEA 2016 Showcases Knowledge Transfer from Offshore Oil and Gas to Wind
vessels needed to support wind projects do not exist in the U.S.
“I would most certainly recommend for them to cross pollinate in the agency because on the ground offshore people are already doing that,” said Landrieu.
All presenters pointed to the Jones Act as something that When it comes down to it, the bottom line is what companies need to abide by. matters to companies in the energy space, said The Act mandates that all goods Landrieu. “People are interested in making money. If transported by water between they can make it from wind, they’ll make it, if they can U.S. ports be carried on U.S.make it from oil and gas they’ll do that,” she said. flagged ships, constructed in the U.S., owned by U.S. citizens, Louisiana has a long history in the energy sector and and crewed by U.S. citizens and Landrieu doesn’t want to see that end. U.S. permanent residents. These “I would love to see Louisiana positioned as a leader requirements were an issue when in the future energy revolution as much as we have constructing the Block Island been in the past and as much as we are in the Wind Farm because no vessel present,” she said. existed in the U.S. that could support a crane large enough to install the turbines. For that reason, Deepwater contracted UK-based Fred Olsen to do the installation. Pipeline
According to Bruce Hamilton, Director, Energy Practice at Navigant, there are currently 21 offshore wind projects in about 12 states that are in various stages of planning or development. Together, the projects represent more than 15 GW of capacity. At this time, however, the only project that is currently under construction is the Block Island Wind Farm, and all of the other projects face giant hurdles that include legal battles, legislative problems and financing issues among other delays.
12 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
AWEA 2016 Showcases Knowledge Transfer from Offshore Oil and Gas to Wind
The offshore wind industry is young and learning, and as it was with early entrants into large-scale solar and wind, companies shy away from being the “first” project out there. “We don’t want to experiment with real-life projects,” said one presenter during the Q&A. Lots of hope is hanging on the Block Island Wind Farm, which should be online by the end of 2016 if all goes according to plan. The overall message to the oil and gas industry is that there is a pipeline of projects — lots of great work out there — but the offshore wind industry needs more ports, manufacturing partners, logistics providers and legislative help to bring that pipeline to fruition. “We will continue to build; all we need is the supply chain,” said DONG’s Jeppesen.
13 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED JULY 22, 2016
Energy from Offshore: Engineering Firm Transitions Expertise from Offshore Oil to Offshore Wind With a long track record in post-design fabrication and installation engineering for the oil and gas sector, one company is hoping to emerge as a leader in the design of offshore wind foundations. By Anne-Marie Walters, Contributor
AFTER THE MOST recent oil production boom in the Gulf of Mexico ended, oil
producers turned to small, light offshore structures to exploit the smaller reserves in shallow waters. These structures could be built and installed quickly and easily, allowing for more gas to be extracted in a shorter timeframe. One example of this new type of platform is the “Inward Batter Guide Structure,” The 865-kW solar project on the Knorr Brake Corporation manufacturing facility in Westminster, Maryland developed by Standard Solar. Credit Standard Solar.
14 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
Energy from Offshore: Engineering Firm Transitions Expertise from Offshore Oil to Offshore Wind
(IBGS). In early 2001, Louisiana-based Keystone Engineering submitted its first IBGS design for construction for applications offshore of Nigeria in the Oyot field. The IBGS, also called the “twisted jacket,” foundation was first installed (via liftboat) in the Gulf of Mexico in March 2005. That summer this structure took a direct hit from Hurricane Katrina, but as this devastating hurricane passed through the West Delta field in Louisiana, Keystone’s IBGS was left undamaged. Today Keystone is bringing its offshore oil expertise to the emerging offshore wind industry in the U.S. by providing Keystone Engineering designed jacket-type substructures for five wind turbine engineering design and generators. Credit: Bentley. consulting services to the Block Island Wind Farm project in Rhode Island. This is the first commercial offshore wind farm in the country. Simulating the Block Island Wind Farm
The Block Island wind farm is under construction off the coast of Rhode Island in the U.S. and should go online in late 2016. In August the turbines are expected to arrive at the site and be installed. The US $290 million project will use five 6-megawatt GE wind turbines that are supported by Keystone-designed substructures, giving it a total capacity of 30 megawatt.
15 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
Energy from Offshore: Engineering Firm Transitions Expertise from Offshore Oil to Offshore Wind
Keystone designed the substructures by adapting the IBGS steel jacket foundations used in the oil and gas industry as the design-basis for the deep-water wind turbine support structures. To help model the engineering, Keystone used Bentley’s SACS offshore engineering software to produce an alternative to typical offshore monopile concrete foundations, which are limited to shallower water depths and smaller wind turbines. Working on five, 24-core computers running 24 hours a day for 10 days, the design team conducted 2,334 simulations, 30 million time steps, and 25 load cases (including operating, storm, start-up, shut-down, fault, maintenance, and installation) for waves of up to 19 meters high and winds from eight directions at speeds ranging from 2 meters per second to 58 meters per second. SACS enabled Keystone to streamline the design and analysis of the simulations, and accurately manage terabytes of project data to minimize the possibility of errors. This integration of offshore engineering software with DNV GL’s Bladed, a wind turbine simulation tool, enabled Keystone to incorporate load models from the turbine generator designer. The process helped optimize the design of the total structure and ensure safe operation under a wide range of weather conditions, including tropical storms, maximizing revenue. An avoidance band in the operating speed of the turbine could cause losses of production up to 50 percent over the lifetime of the turbine. Using SACS, Keystone performed more than 3,000 time-domain simulations for each design iteration, and conducted more than 150 simulations in parallel, reducing cycle time by 50 percent compared to typical European offshore wind projects. The resulting foundation is designed to withstand the 100-year hurricane and checked for robustness against the 1,000-year hurricane. The foundation requires less steel than a comparable foundation and can operate in a much wider weather window commonly found far off the northeast coast of the U.S. 16 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
Energy from Offshore: Engineering Firm Transitions Expertise from Offshore Oil to Offshore Wind
Simulations of the jacket-type foundations. Credit: Bentley.
Engineering Software Supports the Clean Energy Transition
For more than 40 years, the world’s offshore engineers have used advanced engineering software, such as SACS, for the design, fabrication, installation, operations, and maintenance of fixed offshore structures. The use of such software is widely specified to ensure code compliance across the lifecycle of these structures and is used by engineering certification firms such as American Bureau of Shipping, Bureau Veritas Group, China Classification Society, Germanischer Lloyd AG, DNV, and Lloyd’s Register Group, as well as engineering firms. The software enables engineers to dynamically model any type of offshore structural system and provide optimal design against environmental loads, such as waves, wind, and current, in addition to mechanical loads from wind turbines. Engineers can also fully explore the effects of fatigue, ship impact loads, transportation, and installation. For the wind power market, the software has been extended to include more complex loads and geometries and is integrated with most turbine manufacturer simulation software for a fully coupled analysis. This integration allows engineers to simulate the loads on a wind turbine platform structure and optimize these steel structures for cost, installation weight, and strength.
17 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
Energy from Offshore: Engineering Firm Transitions Expertise from Offshore Oil to Offshore Wind
Conclusion
Keystone leveraged the technology developed for the offshore oil and gas industry to meet the complex design criteria for the jacket foundations. The iterative process optimized the jacket design and reduced the amount of steel needed for the substructure, while still ensuring a design life of more than 20 years. As a result, the Block Island Wind Farm jackets are 15 percent lighter than a previous design used for the same type of wind turbine in the North Sea. The optimized design also reduced installation costs by more than 20 percent compared to traditional monopile construction and can survive hurricane-force winds. These benefits are why this technology has been widely adopted in the offshore oil and gas and wind markets. ANNE-MARIE WALTERS is a global marketing director responsible for the marketing and
positioning of Bentley’s solutions and applications that address the needs of the Process, Power, and Enterprise arena. Ms. Walters, who is a chartered chemical engineer, represents Bentley on the board of the Construction Industry Institute and is also heavily engaged in the activities of FIATECH. She sat on the board of the Engineering Contractors and Constructors Association between 2005 and 2010 and was the Chair in 2009. In addition, she is a founding member of the Process Industries STEP Consortium (PISTEP) committee and has served on the boards of CIMsteel and the United Kingdom’s chapter of the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI). She is frequently a guest speaker at industry events sponsored by these and other organizations.
18 Renewable Energy World Magazine SPECIAL REPORT
