NGI Keeping an Eye On Borkum Riffgrund 2 Jackets

The Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) has designed and installed Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems on two of 20 suction bucket jackets at Ørsted’s Borkum Riffgrund 2 offshore wind farm.

The provision of the monitoring technology is part of NGI’s multidisciplinary engagement in the project which saw the institute provide a detailed geotechnical design of the bucket foundations in cooperation with Ørsted.

The systems allow the Danish developer to monitor and verify the behavior of the jackets during the operational lifetime of the wind farm and are expected to give data for further optimization for future projects.

The project includes a total of 325 sensors and 22km of cabling routed through the system, with the logging handled by two custom-built DAQ systems.

NGI said it designed, installed and delivered the instrumentation and monitoring systems based on the successful application at the Borkum Riffgrund 1 project.

To remind, GeoSea’s jack-up vessel Innovation installed the last suction bucket jacket foundations on Borkum Riffgrund 2 in the German North Sea at the end of July.

The 450MW project will comprise a total of 56 turbines mounted 36 monopiles, in addition to the 20 suction buckets, expected to be fully commissioned in early 2019.