Glosten to Design Floating Offshore Wind Platform

The Glosten Associates, Inc. announced it has been awarded a contract from the U.K.–based Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) for the engineering phase of the floating offshore wind turbine demonstrator using the PelaStar tension leg platform (TLP) foundation system.

The $6 million (U.S.), 12-month contract will complete the Front End Engineering Design (FEED) in advance of construction and deployment of a 6 MW demonstration unit off the south coast of the U.K. as early as 2015. Upon completion of the FEED, the ETI is prepared to commit up to $31 million (U.S) to the demonstration project financing package – with ETI financing aimed at accelerating development and deployment of the technologies that can reach the U.K.’s vast deepwater wind resources and attain the low cost of energy targets required for an economically viable system.

The demonstration project will showcase key PelaStar technology developments, crucial to achieve cost-effective, utility scale installations. These include a new five-arm design that enhances system reliability for the demonstration project; synthetic fiber tendons developed primarily for optimal performance while minimizing material and installation cost; and integration of large, next-generation offshore wind turbines as the keystone to effective utilization of the wind resource.

Glosten’s team includes Alstom Renovables España S.L. (Barcelona, Spain) to provide their Haliade 150-6MW offshore wind turbine; Harland and Wolff (Belfast, Ireland) to build the PelaStar foundation; Dockwise (Breda, The Netherlands) to provide the offshore logistics; Cefas (Suffolk, UK) leading the environmental review; NREL (Golden CO, USA) providing in system modeling, instrumentation and test planning; with project certification by Det Norske Veritas (DNV) (Hovik, Norway); and with scale model testing by MARIN (Wageningen, The Netherlands).

www.glosten.com