Serial Production of Lattice Structures for Foundation of Offshore Wind Turbines

Company / Unternehmen: WeserWind GmbH Offshore Construction Georgsmarienhütte
Speaker / Referent: Dr. Sigurd Weise
Position: Manager R&D

Abstract:
The prior demand for cost reduction within the offshore wind industry is the focus of research and development and industrial activities in particular concerning the technical and logistic challenges in establishing a robust and successful offshore wind industry in Germany. In a more general perspective costs will be reduced and profitability increased by a more harmonized growth of the industry, when all activities are strictly addressed to the most efficient utilization of the already existing assets. Once a converter station, the export cable and the onshore grid connection is installed, the time to utilize this capacity on a full scale has to be brought to the shortest. The same is valid for facilities for installation and fabrication. The difficult short term market conditions have to be managed together with all stakeholders in the offshore community. Anticipating the success of this joint activity, innovations have been and will be brought to the foundation fabrication and installation aiming the further cost reduction. In this competition the potentials in lattice structure design and fabrication will be realized for life cycle cost reduction. WeserWind established a serial production for the Tripod fabrication to provide a sufficient amount of structures with respect to the installation demands. Core function in this production is the final assembly plant in Bremerhaven with two production lines. This facility allows a parallel work at numerous structures achieving a continuous output of one Tripod within eight to nine days per line. The shuttle service between the production plant and the offshore terminal is operated by a specially equipped barge. Further production innovations have been implemented. The bracings are produced in a material and time saving manner. For submerged arc welding tandem torch welding was introduced. Photogrammetric measurement is nowadays applied for final acceptance measurement of the global structure. Robot aided remote welding processes and the related equipment have been developed and are tested in the production environment. The technological know-how is going to be transferred to more material saving designs like jackets.