Offshore staff
HOUSTON – Friede & Goldman Ltd. reports the development of BargeRack, a new design solution to the feeder concept for offshore wind turbine installation. The company says that the new design delivers a safe and simple method of installing up to 20MW wind turbines using a self-elevating vessel.
BargeRack is said to eliminate motions between the self-elevating installation vessel and the feeder vessel. This reportedly removes the need for complicated, heavy motion compensation equipment. Uptime is increased due to much larger allowable weather windows. Furthermore, due to the simplicity, existing US infrastructure can be used which eliminates the need for purpose-built feeder vessels and/or expensive and complicated feeder barges.
Friede & Goldman says that the innovative solution utilizes a trussed rack fitted to the transom of a relatively small self-elevating vessel. The feeder barge, with its turbine component cargo, is floated over the submerged rack. Once the feeder barge is secured, the self-elevating vessel uses its onboard jacking system to elevate, while also lifting the feeder barge completely out of the water. From this position, the main crane installs the wind turbine components directly from the stationary feeder barge onto the turbine foundation.
After turbine installation, the self-elevating unit jacks down into the water, submerging the rack, and re-floating the now empty feeder barge.
06/16/2021
