A boat with rally car-style suspension and a giant mechanical “seahorse” are among the designs receiving funding from a competition to solve problems working on offshore wind farms.
Plans for the UK’s offshore wind industry will see turbines up to 190 miles out at sea in three-metre-high waves.
Transferring engineers and equipment safely onto wind turbines which require maintenance in these conditions is extremely difficult.
But the Carbon Trust, which is running the competition, said keeping the turbines generating electricity in rough seas could increase revenue by as much as £3 billion for the new generation of wind farms.
It has shortlisted 13 designs from 450 submissions based on their technical merits, choosing concepts that have the best chance of successfully driving down the cost.
Each of the designs, which include four systems for transferring personnel and equipment from a vessel to a turbine, six vessels which include a transfer system and three launch and recovery systems, will get £100,000 to help them develop.
Some of the innovative ideas include a boat that uses suspension inspired by Paris to Dakar-winning rally cars to remain stable for transfers, a seahorse-type vessel with a towering keel that minimises movement when the ocean swells, and a giant robotic arm for transferring equipment and engineers from ship to turbine base.
Benj Sykes, director of innovation at the Carbon Trust, said: “We’ve trawled the globe looking for revolutionary new ideas that can transfer engineers safely in the huge swells around the UK’s coasts.
“People have been building boats for thousands of years, but we’ve seen some truly radical departures from what you would think a boat should look like.
“These designs could significantly improve the economics of offshore wind and keep our engineers safe far out to sea.”
Source : Orange News