FoundOcean Completes Grouting Operations for the Ormonde Offshore Windfarm (UK)

FoundOcean, the subsea and offshore grouting specialist for the global energy construction industries, has demobilised personnel and equipment after successfully completing the grouting operations for the Ormonde Offshore Windfarm.

The windfarm is located 10km off Barrow-In-Furness. Upon completion it will comprise of 30 RePower 5M wind turbines with the capacity of 150 megawatts and is expected to produce around 500GW hours of electricity every year. It is scheduled to come online in late 2011.

“Ormonde is the largest multiple jacket grouting project to date for FoundOcean and it clearly demonstrates the flexible, scalable nature of our operations,” comments Paul Burns, Operations Director for FoundOcean. “We set ourselves a tough deadline of completing grouting within a 60 day time frame. Poor weather halted operations a number of times but overall it still only took 94 days from mobilisation to demobilisation.”

“The grouting operations went very well and because of FoundOcean’s vast offshore experience any problems they came up against were dealt with swiftly, effectively and professionally,” enthused Annelie Doedens, Project Engineer at Scaldis.

One minor incident on this project demonstrated why, when working in harsh, remote offshore environments, carrying back up equipment and parts is essential. Colin Barrett, Project Engineer and Offshore Supervisor experienced this first-hand. “A damaged part on the system’s surge tank prevented the rotary valve from operating. This is one of a handful of times when equipment parts have failed and it could have caused delays for our client if it wasn’t for the fact that FoundOcean always carry 100% back up of our equipment as standard operating practice.”

Much attention has been given to the Ormonde project from all sides of the offshore supply chain; it is being used as a test case for best practice for multiple jacket installations for wind farms in the future.

FoundOcean foresees this foundation type along with gravity base structures becoming more common as the offshore renewable energy companies look to learn from the oil and gas industry’s experience when designing windfarm foundations.

Key project facts

1,809 tonnes of cement was used

124 sleeves on 31 jackets were grouted

7 cement re-supply runs took place

4,356 FoundOcean man hours spent onboard the grouting vessel

20 FoundOcean personnel were involved in the project

Average cube test strength at 24h was 13MPa

Average cube test strength at 3 days was 39MPa

Average cube test strength at 28 days was 72MPa

It took 40 minutes to grout one sleeve and approximately 3.5 hours in total to complete each jacket

Highest waves were 4.7m

The windfarm is 10km from shore

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Source: foundocean, November 17, 2010