News releases 2015

Atkins wins Statoil's Hywind Installation Challenge - 4 August 2015

Atkins is one of the three companies named as winners of Statoil's most recent innovation campaign, the Hywind Installation Challenge, alongside MODEC and Ulstein. The chosen designs are now undergoing further study to help mature the winning concepts.

The Innovation Challenge campaign looked to others within the energy sector to make the Hywind concept available in more markets around the world. The Hywind demonstrator was launched in 2009 as the world's first full scale floating offshore wind demonstration unit, and a 30MW pilot park is planned for installation off the coast of Scotland in 2017, using five 6MW turbines.

With plans for even bigger arrays of turbines in the future, Statoil launched the Installation Challenge to look at options to improve the Hywind turbines assembly and installation sequence to make the concept more cost efficient and available in more markets around the world.

Atkins' solution to this problem was to use multiple turbines attached to a reusable transportation frame. This reduced the draught of the structures, resulting in the following benefits:

• The turbines can be towed at reduced draughts. This allows them to be assembled in regions where a deep water inshore location is not readily available, or where a deep water inshore location exists but the tow-out route is draught-restricted.
• The draught of the turbines can be reduced, enabling assembly against a conventional quayside. This removes the requirement for offshore lifts, which offers potential for cost, schedule and safety gains.
• Multiple turbines can be towed simultaneously, increasing transport efficiency by reducing the number of towing vessels required over a large farm development.
• Excellent motion characteristics (akin to a semi-submersible platform) reduce weather restrictions on towing and allow an increase in tow speed compared to towing single turbines.

Chris Cowland, Atkins' projects director for offshore renewables, said: "The offshore renewable industry is constantly looking for ways to reduce costs. In this instance, we were able to draw upon our talent and expertise across our oil and gas teams in North America and the UK, as well as our renewables division, to develop innovative solutions for the benefit of the industry"

Ed Randall, chief engineer in Atkins' oil and gas division, added: "This is a fantastic win for us, as it enables us to showcase our innovative thinking and our experience of cutting edge technology. It is a great example of how Atkins empowers our talented and enthusiastic engineers to come up with ideas from scratch. It also exhibits great collaboration across our oil and gas and renewables divisions, and the benefits from our recent acquisition of Houston Offshore Engineering."

Atkins' cross discipline experts and specialists provide a complete range of services in all aspects of renewable energy technology, and with experience in the offshore environment dating back to the 1970s, a wealth of knowledge and expertise to draw on to inform cost effective solutions for offshore wind. Atkins has been involved in a number of floating wind projects including Principle Power's WindFloat prototype in Portugal. Find out more at www.atkinsglobal.com/renewables.

For more information about the Statoil Installation Challenge, visit the Statoil Innovate website: http://innovate.statoil.com/challenges/hywind/Pages/default.aspx.