Quoceant deliver a design basis for EMEC
The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC) is a leading marine energy test centre offering both wave and tidal at sea test facilities. EMEC is seeking to also cater for floating offshore wind (FOW) technologies and has been investigating options to deploy a Floating Subsystem Test Platform (FSTP). The scaled platform would be an offshore test bed suited to a range of novel sub-systems such as monitoring equipment, mooring technologies, new materials and many more.
Quoceant were contracted by EMEC to develop a Design Basis document to guide onward development of the FSTP. Initial simple response calculation work was followed by more sophisticated in OrcaFlex analysis, to model the response of a generic platform design and to understand how design changes might be used to tune the scale-platform’s response to better mimic a full-scale platform.
Image shows a CAD drawing of a floating subsystem test platform concept (courtesy EMEC)
Potential users were engaged, and the concept design reviewed to ensure their requirements were included. The Design Basis report drew together design principals, site and environmental conditions, high-level functional requirements and adherable codes and standards for onward detailed design. A high-level study also set-out estimated costs for CAPEX and OPEX and considered port and harbour requirements.
Speaking about the recent project, Matthew Finn, Commercial Director at EMEC said:
"EMEC has hosted demonstrations of a variety of technologies and subsystems at our marine testing facilities in Orkney over the last 20 years. Following the ScotWind process we have seen increasing interest from companies who would like to prove technologies that could then be used on the windfarms that will be deployed in the waters around us in the next 20 years.
“We commissioned Quoceant to provide a concept design for a platform which could be deployed at our Billia Croo test site to the west of Orkney and provide a representative test and demonstration experience. We are now looking at the business case for taking this forward and if you would like to get involved in its development or as a potential client please get in touch.”
Quoceant worked with sub-contractors First Marine Solutions (FMS) throughout this project who supported modelling, analysis and design aspects. The work was funded by the Interreg North West Europe AFLOWT project which aims to accelerate market uptake of floating offshore wind technology.