Nucore Opens Offshore Wind Season, Kicks Off Walney Extension Work

Oteac Ltd and HVAC & Refrigeration Engineering Ltd, part of the UK Nucore Group, have begun providing fire and gas detection and suppression services on the Walney Extension wind farm, which represents one in a number of the group’s recent offshore wind contracts.

The two companies are in charge of the maintenance of fire and gas detection and suppression systems, FGas checks and HVAC (Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning) equipment on the Walney 3 and Walney 4 substations at Ørsted’s 659MW wind farm located in UK waters.

Besides Walney Extension, Oteac recently won a four-year contract with Equinor, former Statoil, for service and maintenance of fire and gas systems on the transformer platform of the 316.8MW Sheringham Shoal wind farm offshore Norfolk.

The company designed, supplied, installed and commissioned fire protection and detection on the wind farm’s asset and its onshore control station and will be in charge of further inspection and maintenance of the equipment on a bi-annual basis.

According to Nucore, Oteac has also installed a new Compressed Air Foam (CAF) system for a large UK offshore wind farm, which protects the electrical transformers onboard the substation, and when in use, detects fire using high integrity flame detection and voting logic.

“Transformers contain oil and coolants known to present a potential fire risk to personnel and assets – the self-contained compressed air foam system (CAF) helps mitigate the risk to as low as reasonably practicable,” Dave Fyfe, Oteac’s Offshore Service Manager, said.

A fire around the transformers could result in considerable repair bills, lost revenue and operational downtime, Nucore said, emphasizing that the CAF system provides protection both to the most volatile and most valuable part of the platform.

Headquartered in Aberdeen, the Nucore Group is a portfolio of specialist engineering companies which provides products and services, from fire and security to climate control engineering, in the renewable, oil & gas and petrochemical sectors.