British Geotechnical Association Recognises PISA Project

The Ørsted-led PISA (Pile Soil Analysis) project has won the Fleming award from the British Geotechnical Association for the new shorter design of monopile foundations said to reduce green energy costs.

The PISA project showed that the foundations do not need to be as long as previously assumed in order to withstand wind forces the turbine’s rotor blades are exposed to.

According to Ørsted, this is important new knowledge because shorter foundations make the installation of offshore wind turbines cheaper, meaning that the PISA project could help reduce the cost of green power.

Jesper Skov Gretlund, Senior Manager at Ørsted’s R&D Project Management, said: “The method is already becoming popular in offshore design. It’s one of the many initiatives that are helping to realise our ambition of making green energy cheaper than energy from fossil sources.”

The new monopile design is the result of a collaboration between Ørsted, SSE, Statoil, RWE, Statkraft, Iberdrola, Vattenfall, Alstom, Van Oord, EDF and Eon, as well as the University of Oxford, Imperial College London and University College Dublin.

The academic work group, led by Oxford University and including Imperial College London and University College Dublin, developed the model, which was later tested by the Ørsted-led team of industry players at two sites (Cowden in England and Dunkirk in France) for assessment and validation.

The collaboration was organised and operated under the Carbon Trust Offshore Wind Accelerator programme.