'It's easy to stack up conservative engineering parameters and say: "This is impossible"'

Construction of the hundreds of gigawatts of offshore wind plant forecast to take place globally in the coming decades “won’t happen” without the adoption of development strategies rooted in digital modelling that also take new approaches to collaboration, according to the CEO of engineering consultancy Wood Thilsted, which has had a hand in almost 7GW of projects off Europe, including the giant Dogger Bank complex in the North Sea.

“The old-fashioned ideas of engineering that do work [should be retained]… but [they] won’t continue to forever. Engineering advice must be better.”

Wood says experience on a range of high-profile offshore wind projects in the past five years – including detailed design work on the foundations for the A and B phases of the 3.6GW Dogger Bank being built by SSE-Equinor, full scoping on integrated development of Iberdrola’s 3.1GW East Anglia complex off England and geotechnical support to Vattenfall’s 605MW Kriegers Flak in the Danish Baltic – has reinforced the company’s instinct toward “automation and collaboration”.

“Automate the process [of early-stage engineering] as much as possible to as far as is possible completely understand the variables, maybe not designing straightaway quicker, but certainly better,” he says, adding by way of example: “[If] I know that the waves from the north-east of my offshore wind farm are going to dominate my design, let’s look ‘into’ those waves, and we may discover we only have a half-season’s data which means we need to attach a big conservative factor.

“So let’s get the other half-season and really know what we are dealing with. That’s how we can deliver solid engineering start with modelling,” says Wood.

Bates, while he flags the “bandying about” of terms such as “AI [artificial intelligence], ML [machine learning] and digital twinning”, says: “A software-enabled approach to engineering that allows you to run multiple simulations to increase confidence in the do-ability of a project has to be right.”

But, it also has to answer the question “so what?”, he adds, pointing to a digital twinning project he was involved in that looked at the role of head- and tailwinds in the spacing of jetliner landings at Heathrow Airport in London, UK.

“Wind turbines and so wind farms face a huge number of variables. Taking a pragmatic approach that [through AI] allows you to better understand the variables you are dealing with – the ‘risks’ – is essential to driving [any major industrial project].”

Selling a digital-first strategy on engineering for offshore wind has revealed persistent divisions in the developer fraternity, Wood notes, saying while ‘it is difficult to generalise, you’re seeing some customers that are really happy to be innovative and push things to the edge and then others that are falling back on the traditional, that are not going to first ones to try something new.

“Clients who [start by saying]: ‘I don’t actually know yet what I am asking you to do but come and help me build this project’ – this in our experience has led to the best outcomes.”

“This is about collaboration with the developer, other contractors and also the supply chain so you can engineer-in designing ‘for’ the fabricator – so maybe a [foundation] piece is not wholly optimal for weight but it is the most optimal for that fabricator’s set-up [in the yard] and that’s very powerful in moving a project forward swiftly.”

“Whenever a project is delayed [as VW1 was] you are always going to ‘reopen’ the turbine [model] question because the technology is advancing so fast,” says Wood.

Matt Palmer, CEO of Wood Thilsted USA, states: “We worked closely with the client first to look at the options [of different turbines] and then to figure out what [engineering] needed to be done again – and importantly what didn’t, to minimise impact on the project timeline.”

Wood adds: “The decision… is not just [about] the cost of the turbine, it is also the cost of the balance of plant [including foundation and power infrastructure] you are going to need to rethink.”

Not a luxury projects enjoyed in the earlier eras offshore – wind or indeed oil & gas – where final engineering design was ‘frozen’ as soon as possible with the aim of fast-tracking projects forward. “Completely,” agrees Wood. “This agile engineering process helps us move quickly as and when a client needs this kind of flexibility.”

The coming generation of offshore engineers will require the ability to “react to the often seemingly ever-changing world of these projects”, he says, pointing to the “evolved” thinking his company has found it was bringing to detailed design work on Avangrid Renewables’ Park City and Commonwealth projects off the US state of Massachusetts, which together total over 2GW of future power capacity.

'Floating finding its legs'

Though the industry – and Wood Thilsted – continue to lean heavily toward construction of bottom-fixed wind plant, Wood says the consultancy is alive to the floating sector’s ascendancy.

“Certainly, the floating wind sector is getting its legs,” he quips. “But we are still at that point when you can’t really provide a price [for an engineering assignment] based on experience; it still has to be more a ‘common sense’ approach. No doubt, however, that all is moving in the right direction for floating.

“In some ways, bottom-fixed has been able to scale with the turbines [as they have scaled up to the 15MW-plus models now coming onto the market],” notes Wood. “Floating has the challenge of leaping from 2MW and 3MW machines [installed on some of the pilot arrays] to 15MW in one go.”

Bringing in Bates to chair Wood Thilsted was informed by the desire for expansion of the consultancy but is fuelled, says Wood, by the bigger ambition of devising “engineering for a better planet, nothing less – this is not just about what comes through on the balance sheet”.

Bates adds: “Wood Thilsted has the challenge of scaling fast enough to meet the rapid growth demand for [its] services and delivery – and the same is true for the [offshore wind] industry as a whole if it is going to contribute as it might to the renewables ecosystem that will get [the world to climate stability] and soonest.”