Sustainability, cost reduction and technological development are some of the benefits offered by the SEA-LIFT project, whose main objective is to develop a revolutionary system for the installation and maintenance of offshore wind farms.
The European Green Pact contains Europe’s long-term strategic vision with the aim of achieving a competitive, inclusive and climate-neutral economy by 2050. In line with this plan, the EU Strategy on Marine Renewable Energy proposes to increase the production capacity of marine renewable energy in Europe from its current level (16 GW) to at least 60 GW by 2030 and 300 GW by 2050. At present, according to Wind Europe, ‘ports are a crucial element in the supply chain of offshore wind farms and one of the technological and logistical challenges they face is to have their own low-cost means to be able to develop the port operations inherent to the floating offshore wind sector’.
In this context, the SEA-LIFT project, with the aim of facilitating the evolution of the offshore wind market, proposes the elimination of the need for current cranes of large tonnage and low availability, as well as the reduction of travel at sea, by allowing maintenance operations to be carried out in-situ or in port, thus optimising the availability factors of the wind farm.
SEA-LIFT is a research project funded under the TRANSMISIONES 2023 call of the Spanish Research Agency (AEI) and the Centre for Technological and Industrial Development (CDTI). The consortium, made up of five companies and two research centres, will take as its starting point NABRAWIND’s Skylift technology of self-stacking towers (already in use in onshore wind farms), and will work on its evolution for use in offshore wind. To this end, the consortium will count on the participation of SAITEC and NAUTILUS, as benchmarks in the Spanish floating wind sector, as well as the experience of INGECID and TETRACE in the development of products and processes for the offshore sector. The participation of IHCantabria will make it possible to simulate and validate the technology in its test tanks, while CENER will develop the necessary control techniques for the self-powering of towers on floating platforms.
With all this, the consortium aims to develop a new installation and maintenance system that will facilitate the evolution of the offshore wind market by installing high-power turbines (15 MW-20 MW) and at greater depths, overcoming the technical and economic barriers that currently exist. Because SEA-LIFT will allow the assembly of the key elements of the wind turbine in both fixed and floating offshore substructures. Its versatile design will allow installation both in harbours and at sea. This flexibility represents a major innovation.
The result of the SEA-LIFT project will lead to an improvement in the availability of installation means, will provide more flexibility in the planning and execution of new projects. Compared to traditional systems, SEA-LIFT estimates a significant reduction in the implementation costs of such solutions, which according to the consortium’s calculations are 3 to 5 times cheaper than traditional means. In addition, self-piercing methods reduce the dependence on specialised port infrastructures or high bearing capacity, which is why SEA-LIFT will open up the market to ports that are currently uncompetitive due to their infrastructure.
SEA-LIFT project (PLEC2023-010279) financed by MICIU/AEI /10.13039/501100011033
