SBT Energy announce their Disconnectable Turret (DTR) concept for Floating Wind.
SBT Energy Limited announce their innovative Disconnectable Turret for Renewables (DTR) which addresses one of the key challenges in the Carbon Trust floating wind JIP. The system enables safe and controlled disconnection and re-connection of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs), thus reducing the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE) together with risks to people, equipment and the environment.
By leveraging technology from the offshore oil & gas industry SBT Energy have developed a disconnectable buoy without swivels or bearings. This will avoid having to lay down the ends of moorings and power cables on the seabed, prior to the FOWT arrival and when ‘out of service’.
Our innovative system maximises the use of standard industry components and importantly enables the DTR to be used within a spread mooring arrangement of a semi-submersible.
With this novel arrangement, the number of operations is minimised and also potentially avoids any direct handling of the power cables.
Although mooring line lengths increase with deeper water, the use of a DTR will avoid having to lay-down and recover long mooring lines and cables, reducing risks, offshore time, maintenance and repair costs. The DTR also allows pre-tensioning and commissioning operations to be performed prior to arrival of the foundation, increasing flexibility in the construction and deployment schedule.
The DTR may be designed for use with many of the current FOWT configurations allowing significant LCOE reductions across the industry
