Dan Kyle Spearman, The Carbon Trust: Importance of Access

Dan Kyle Spearman, Project Manager within the Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) programme at the Carbon Trust and one of the panellists at the closing discussion on short and long term potential at the Offshore WIND Conference in Amsterdam, has provided an update on the Access projects within the programme and an insight into the sector.

With respect to his work within the industry, Spearman said that prior to the Carbon Trust he was working for a consultancy specialised in testing high-speed vessels, including the offshore wind vessels. At the Carbon Trust he now manages the Access workstream of the Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) programme, which is looking at the challenges of getting technicians from the shore to the turbines.

“The current practice for accessing turbines is to use crew transfer vessels (CTV), and one of the areas of research we have been undertaking is to benchmark the performance of CTVs by creating Performance Plots, or P-Plots. These P-Plots are looking at what the actual performance of the existing CTVs is,” Spearman explained.

This is beneficial for the developers, Spearman said, as it helps them understand what vessels they need for individual sites both in the early planning stage, so they can recognise the cost and availability, but also in the operations stage so they can make sure they have an optimal fleet and ensure they can actually get access to the turbines.

“This is definitely not one of those things where one size fits all, as for each site, you have to take into consideration quite a lot of parameters, and one of those parameters is the vessel performance,” he said.

When asked about the criteria used for the P-Plot method of benchmarking the current CTV fleets, Spearman explained: “The method of benchmarking is split into two different types of trial. The first is the Transit performance, where the vessels is at its operational speed, going from the shore to the wind farm, and the limiting criteria is based on the motion of the vessel, that is pitch, roll, and vertical acceleration. Using these limiting criteria, you can find out whether that vessel in those particular conditions would go above the thresholds, therefore no longer comfortable for the technicians on board. This is done for different directions, wave heights and periods and from this analysis the vessel P-Plots can be determined.  This project is being completed as we speak.”

Referring to his topic at the Offshore WIND Conference, Spearman said that there is going to be quite a number of areas that will be changing in the future. One of the things that has to be put into consideration is that not all the future wind farms are going to be farther from shore, he said.

“There will be some nearshore wind farms constructed in the future, where you will actually find very similar type of vessels to what we are using at the moment. Obviously, they will be slightly more modern and optimized based on the learnings on the previous vessels. For example, there are some quite easy gains to be had by using CPP (Controllable Pitch Propellers), so you can get better fuel economy and speed, while also improving the push-on performance.”

Building wind farms farther offshore will lead to a shift towards larger, SOV-type vessels, Spearman said. There will also be a bigger mix of vessels used during the construction phases: SOVs, potentially accommodation units, whether a jack-up or a floatel, and this will probably be combined with CTVs, whether they will be operating from the offshore and acting as daughter crafts, or they will be going back and forth from the shore to the construction site.

Spearman went on to say that, from a more general point of view, getting people to have a better understanding of what is happening outside is very important, and added: “This is something that we are trying to push with the vessel performance. If we are relaying what the vessels’ benchmark performance is, then the developers on site can get a better understanding of the operational limits of that particular vessel.

“I think that it is quite an important aspect, to get that understanding of the offshore operations to both the procurement and management teams,” he concluded.

Speaking of the importance of industry-focused conferences, Spearman said: “Conferences are very important for people to get together and share knowledge, whether it is having common practices, or showing what has worked for certain projects. They are a good opportunity for both developers and supply chains to show each other what they need and what they can offer. However, it is important to have fewer high quality conferences to ensure that the quality of the content and attendees at these events.”

Dan Kyle Spearman manages the Access workstream of the Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) programme in the Carbon Trust’s Innovation team. He is a Naval Architect who previously worked for a marine consultancy gaining experience of sea trials and model testing of high speed craft. Spearman manages R&D projects focussed on de-risking of cutting edge innovative concepts and developing methods of better understanding vessel performance.

The Offshore WIND Conference will take place on 24 and 25 October 2016 in Amsterdam RAI.