Osbit Secures Safe Crew Transfer on Japan’s First OWF

UK’s North East engineering firm Osbit Power, part of the Energi Coast steering group, is helping Japan to reinvigorate one of its regions, following a natural disaster in 2011, after signing a contract to supply a key piece of safety equipment to a project to build the country’s first offshore wind farm.

Northumberland-based Osbit Power’s innovative MaXccess-T18 crew transfer system is set to help engineers work on the Fukushima Forward project, which will see wind turbines installed 20km off the coast of Japan.

The revolutionary access system, invented by Osbit Power, will allow engineers to access the 2MW downwind floating turbine supplied by Hitachi and the 66kV floating sub-station, which are situated in deep and rough waters, 20km off the coast of Japan.

With difficult wave conditions, the equipment has been chosen as it can be operated safely and efficiently in extremely difficult wave conditions. The MaXccess-T18 system has been installed on the project’s crew transfer vessel J-Cat One, which was built by Veka Shipbuilding in The Netherlands and is the first dedicated offshore wind crew boat in Japan.

Tony Trapp, Managing Director, at Osbit Power, said: “We are looking forward to helping ensure engineers can access and construct these new wind farms at the same levels of safety and regularity as engineers working on UK wind farms have been experiencing since we began supplying the system in 2012. Financial assistance from DECC has been a great help in establishing OP as a leading supplier of access systems.”