G. Hoogendoorn – BSc Design in principle for flexible fully assembled wind turbine installation Offshore installation of wind turbines © Marc Brinkman Design in principle for flexible fully assembled wind turbine installation Offshore installation of wind turbines By G. Hoogendoorn – BSc Master Thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the Department Maritime and Transport Technology of Faculty Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering of Delft University of Technology to be defended publicly on Friday September 11, 2020 at 09:00 AM Student number: 4439562 MSc track: Multi-Machine Engineering / Transport Engineering and Logistics Report number: 2020.MME.8435 Supervisor: Ir. W. van den Bos Thesis committee: Dr. ir. H. Polinder TU Delft committee Chair, 3mE Prof. dr. R.R. Negenborn, TU Delft committee Chair ad interim, 3mE Dr. A.A. Kana, TU Delft committee member, 3mE Dr. ir. S.A. Miedema, TU Delft committee member, 3mE Ir. E. Romeijn, company Supervisor, Huisman Date: September 8, 2020 An electronic version of this thesis is available at http://repository.tudelft.nl/. It may only be reproduced literally and as a whole. For commercial purposes only with written authorization of Delft University of Technology. Requests for consult are only taken into consideration under the condition that the applicant denies all legal rights on liabilities concerning the contents of the advice. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world. – Albert Einstein ii iii Preface Dear reader, First of all I would like to thank you for reading this report. Wind energy is an interesting form of alternative energy in my opinion. In the Netherlands, wind turbines are installed onshore in various places. These wind turbines are very large when passing by car or train. However, offshore wind turbines are typically larger in capacity compared with onshore wind turbines. Many of those cannot be seen from the coast although more wind energy is generated by offshore wind turbines compared with onshore wind turbines. The reason behind my interest in offshore wind turbines is the large and challenging installation of these wind turbines. Besides, the used transportation methods and demanding onshore logistics are also interesting. I would like to thank all the people involved in my graduation project. Especially the supervisors who I could contact when needed and gave me the opportunity to continue during the Corona crisis. I started this project with Dr. ir. H. Polinder who I contacted for the wind program of Huisman. After an interesting discussion with ir. E. Romeijn of Huisman I got the opportunity to write my own research proposal to perform research on fully assembled wind turbine installation using cranes on a floating vessel. My daily supervisors ir. W. van den Bos of the TU Delft and ir. R. Nouwens of Huisman Equipment helped me well during the research period and gave critical but usable feedback. The team of supervisors gave me the opportunity to design and engineer new solutions for wind turbine installation. Special thanks to M. Brinkman of Huisman who helped me with finding the different vessels for wind turbine installation and who build the final model 3D model. Furthermore, I would like to thank my family for guiding me at home. The Corona crisis forced us all to work at home which gave me the opportunity to develop and compare different concepts. I’m especially thankful to my father. His critical thinking and our discussions helped me splitting process and content in the project. Furthermore, I would like to thank my colleagues within Huisman Equipment who gave me the opportunity to ask questions for my project. I would like to thank the company in general for facilitating the graduation project. It was interesting to use divers methods and perspectives in this project. I have not only applied tools and knowledge which I have learned from during my mechanical engineering studies but also design principles which I have learned during Design Thinking and my minor at Industrial Design. This knowledge in combination with my interest in cranes and transport methods let to the development of the proposed concept. Besides, I acquired valuable information related to offshore wind installation. The offshore wind turbine industry was more interesting and challenging than I had ever thought. I hope that my contribution to science and industry will help fulfilling future wind turbine installation demand. Gerben Hoogendoorn Driebruggen, July 31, 2020 iv Abstract Wind turbine industry is growing and future predictions are promising. However, a shortage of installation vessels could influence this growth in offshore wind industry. Commonly, wind turbines are installed in components using a jack-up vessel. Occasionally, wind turbines are installed fully assembled. The center of gravity of a fully assembled wind turbine is relatively low and thus lifting above the wind turbine is not necessarily for fully assembled wind turbine installation. Wind turbines can be installed fully assembled using cranes in twin lift configuration to reduce required lifting capacities. The flexibility and scalability of the vessel depends on the location of the cranes on the vessel. Different vessels can install wind turbines with their advantages and disadvantages. To identify these solutions, principles are proposed and compared with state-of-the-art vessels for wind turbine installations. A morphological analysis is used to identify promising solutions for fully assembled wind turbine installation. Eight concepts are compared in a scenario comparison with varying distance between nearby marshalling ports and the wind turbine park location. Several solutions show subsequent improvement in installation rates. One new concept, the PWT installation vessel, shows overall improvement in installation rates. This solution, developed by the author of this report, is proposed for flexible and scalable fully assembled wind turbine installation. v List of abbreviations CoG Center of Gravity LCOE Levelized Cost Of Energy DP system Dynamic Positioning System SWATH Small-waterplane-area twin hull GM Metacentric height PWT installation Parallelogram Wind Turbine installation vi Contents Preface .........................................................................................................................................iv Abstract ........................................................................................................................................ v List of abbreviations .......................................................................................................................vi 1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 1 Research goal & questions .......................................................................................................... 3 Scope ........................................................................................................................................ 4 Outline ...................................................................................................................................... 5 2. State of the art ...................................................................................................................... 6 Chapter outline .......................................................................................................................... 6 Offshore wind turbine market ..................................................................................................... 6 Wind turbine parks in future ....................................................................................................... 8 Growing offshore wind turbines ................................................................................................. 10 State-of-the-art installation vessels ............................................................................................ 15 Modifications on state-of-the-art vessels .................................................................................... 19 Future concepts for wind turbine installation .............................................................................. 21 Summary ................................................................................................................................. 25 3. Wind turbine installation ....................................................................................................... 27 Chapter outline ........................................................................................................................ 27 Gemini Wind Park ..................................................................................................................... 27 Installation of foundation .......................................................................................................... 29 Installation of wind turbines ...................................................................................................... 31 Maintenance and decommissioning ............................................................................................ 34 Grouping wind turbine installation vessels .................................................................................. 36 Schematic overview of proposed concepts ................................................................................