Global Marine Systems Upgrades CS Sovereign Vessel for Offshore Renewable Energy Projects (UK)

Global Marine Systems Limited has announced a major upgrade of its CS Sovereign vessel. Global Marine‟s marine engineering team worked closely with an offshore handling equipment supplier, to design and build two 2,300 tonne turntables, in order to expand the ships capability for a further round of offshore renewable energy projects.

The CS Sovereign, which is stationed at Portland in Dorset, has had two „basket‟ turntables built into its existing cable tanks during a brief dry-docking period. These turntables are designed to operate at a maximum linear speed of 1,000m/hr, and have been adapted to seamlessly accommodate the vessel‟s existing hydraulic power units.

The conversion further expands the flexibility of CS Sovereign, enhancing its role as an ideal vessel for the installation and burial of coilable and non coilable cables. Over a period of ten months, the turntables were adapted in such a way as to ensure that the vessel‟s existing telecommunications cable lift is not compromised, ensuring that the turntables can still handle the deployment of submarine fibre optic cables.

“It‟s essential that Global Marine has a fleet of ships which can handle the rigorous demands of both the telecoms and energy markets, which understandably have different operational requirements,” says Nicci Broom, managing director, Global Marine Energy. ”For our customers, we need to have the operational flexibility to make any project we carry out as cost-effective and expedient as possible, and so the investment in these turntables was vital for us to meet customer demand and to continue being a pioneer within the marine engineering industry”.

With energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, announcing this week that more than 2,500 wind turbines will be installed around the UK coast over the next nine years, the CS Sovereign expects to be contributing to this dramatic increase in offshore wind generation in an effort to meet the growing demand for electricity and reduction in carbon emissions.

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Source: Global Marine Systems, July 14, 2011;