US Wind to Install Maryland Offshore Met Mast in August

A meteorological tower for US Wind’s 268MW offshore wind farm in Maryland is scheduled to be installed at the offshore project site in August 2018. The met mast will be delivered by Gulf Island Fabrication, which signed a contract with US Wind in March.

The structure will be constructed as an intricate steel lattice tower at a height of approximately 330 feet (100.6 meters). The foundation is a Braced Caisson, a concept based on the Inward Battered Guide Structure (IBGS), commonly known as the Twisted Jacket, a patented solution by Keystone Engineering.

The tower and its foundation are expected to be sent off from Gulf Island’s fabrication facility in Huoma, Louisiana, on 7 July.

“Gulf Island was pleased to have been awarded the met tower and is committed to this new industry in the U.S. We have been delivering offshore structures for 33 years and realize the potential opportunities along the East Coast,” Roy Francis, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Gulf Island Fabrication, told Offshore WIND in a statement.

At the beginning of April, the company emerged as one of the partners of the Bay State Wind project off Massachusetts, as the developers, Ørsted and Eversource, and Germany-based steel pipe manufacturing specialist EEW teamed up with Gulf Island Fabrication on the production of monopile foundations and transition pieces. EEW and Gulf Island have already visited Massachusetts to view potential site locations that would accommodate their facility.

Gulf Island Fabrication delivered the five jacket foundations for America’s first offshore wind farm, the Deepwater Wind-built Block Island Wind Farm (BIWF), which is now fully operational. For the BIWF project, the Louisiana-based company had also collaborated with Germany’s EEW, and  the foundations for the first offshore wind farm in the US were also designed by Keystone Engineering.

Offshore WIND Staff