The Salamander floating offshore wind project, a joint venture between Simply Blue Group, Ørsted and Subsea 7, has awarded the pre-FEED (front-end engineering design) deal to Ocergy for its OCG-Wind foundation technology.
The US-based Ocergy has developed a novel semisub floater called OCG-Wind, to support turbines larger than 10 MW, designed for the development of large-scale wind farms. It is targeting a levelised cost of energy (LCOE) that can start to drive reductions in floating offshore wind farms to eventually be competitive with fixed offshore wind farms.
The move follows a memorandum of understanding signed with Ocergy last year to evaluate its foundation design for the 100 MW development in northeast Scotland.
A feasibility study considered all aspects of the design, technical performance, fabrication, assembly, operations, and installation of the OCG-Wind for Salamander. It also reviewed the compatibility of the OCG-Wind platform with the site, inclusive of performance, and supply chain and local content management, as well as identified schedule risks and overall project costs.
Salamander is intended to be progressed through the innovation track of Crown Estate Scotland’s Innovation and Targeted Oil and Gas (INTOG) leasing round. The INTOG round will grant seabed leases through an auction process, which will be split into two pots – one for smaller scale innovation projects of less than 100 MW and one for larger projects linked to oil and gas infrastructure.
The floaters are expected to be fabricated at Global Energy Group’s Port of Nigg for installation at the project site located 35 km off Peterhead. ERM’s Dolphyn electrolysis, desalination and hydrogen production concept is also planned for the project.
