Statoil Throws Down Offshore Wind Turbine O&M Innovation Challenge

Statoil is seeking proposals for equipment and procedures to facilitate efficient heavy maintenance operations on floating and far offshore wind turbines without the use of jack-up vessels or large floating crane vessels.

Heavy maintenance refers to replacement and/or repair of large components in the Rotor and Nacelle Assembly (RNA) of an offshore wind turbine. Examples of such components are rotor, rotor blade, hub, rotor blade pitch bearing, main bearing, generator, gearbox and transformer. Jack-up vessels are used for this purpose in the offshore wind industry today.

It is expected that it will not be possible to use jack-up vessels for performing heavy maintenance for many of the future floating wind farm developments. The reason for this is water depth limitations. It is also considered that using large floating crane vessels for heavy maintenance on floating wind turbines will neither be practical nor economically viable, due to long mobilisation time, large day rates and very short weather windows, Statoil said.

The technology to be developed here shall be suitable for floating wind turbines, but is expected to be useful for bottom-fixed turbines as well.

Participants must complete their proposals and submit by 23 April, 2017. A proposal must comprise concept description, operational and handling procedures, assessment of technical maturity, and recommendations for further work.

Proposals will be evaluated during April 2017, and participants may be contacted by the evaluation committee for clarifications.

At least one, and up to three proposals will be announced as winners in May 2017, and will each be awarded a cash prize of NOK 100,000 (around EUR 11,000). When receiving the prize, the winners acknowledge an intention to go into discussions with the aim of developing the proposal further, potentially into an industrial solution.

Statoil aims at doing a pilot project in 2020-2021.