For the last five years, Green Shipping Line (GSL) has been developing an affordable offshore wind feeder vessel that can be built in the United States and operate in all U.S. coastal ports.
This is especially important because after visiting European offshore wind ports, including Esbjerg and Cuxhaven, along with a careful study of ports in the United States, we concluded there is a vast difference between the European and U.S. ports and adjustments to approaches will need to be taken.
The European Offshore Wind Ports
On our visits, we learned that the European installation model is based on marshaling all the components of an entire offshore wind field (including transition pieces, towers, nacelles and blades) at one huge port facility. The facilities have reinforced quays and storage and often have a manufacturer (or several) onsite. Due to the relatively few offshore wind marshalling ports and the make-up of the ocean, the distance from the port to the field is often longer than what is being planned in the United States. These European ports have no bridge or tunnel restrictions and are in deep waters.
To create the fields, Wind Turbine Installation Vessels (WTIVs, sometimes known in the U.S. as Jack-Up Rigs, or JURs) are loaded with up to five complete towers at a time and then sail to the offshore fields and install the towers. Interestingly, feeders bring the components to these central facilities from smaller ports where manufacturers are located. Due to their large size, WTIVs only make one port of call to load components.
U.S. Ports
Our ports, many of which date back to colonial time, are much smaller than their offshore European counterparts. According to The Maritime Executive,
“In the European experience, the leading offshore wind countries learned that the industry and the supply chain will develop around those places where the best port infrastructure exists … However, no U.S. port has the vast acreage that developed at the major European hubs. On the East Coast we anticipate the need for between four to six large ports to build and service the turbines, while every state that has a wind farm will require a smaller, specialized port aligned to the long term 25-year operations and maintenance phase.”
The U.S. ports are generally not reinforced to handle the loads of the enormous offshore wind components today. To give an idea of the magnitude of port investment required, the European port investment estimate is $7.9 billion to meet 2030 targets. This being the case, we visited and studied the positives as well as the limitations of each U.S. port under consideration for supplying components for an offshore wind field including: distances to the offshore wind farms that needed to be supplied, channel depths and widths, turning basins and clearances, quay depths and lengths, and physical impairments such as bridge heights, breakwaters, and utility lines etc.
Based on our findings and commitment to transport components to either a foreign or U.S. JUR, we established our standards for the proper vessel to offer to the industry. Our criteria included:
- Fully Jones Act compliant, including ABS and USCG certifications
- The ability to operate out of all the existing U.S. ports on the east coast
- Providing a stable platform for at-sea transfers, including DP2 to keep on station and bow thrusters for full maneuverability
- Built in a yard familiar with the Dutch/German construction methods
- Having a complete set of both working and shop drawings, to save time and money, which would facilitate a completion date of late 2023
- A guaranteed price in compliance with our budget
- A proven design – working in the offshore wind industry today
- The ability to transport a 10 MW nacelle, three tower pieces and three blades in a single two-day round trip sailing cycle, in compliance with the manufacturers’ specifications
The Eleanor
Today, the GSL Eleanor Class feeder vessel meets all the criteria listed above we thought critical to success. As offshore wind turbines have continued to see explosive growth, we have determined we can transport up to 14 MW nacelles and are studying how to package the hypothetical 15 MW nacelle, assuming that the manufacturers do not optimize the smaller models for more output (as Siemens Gamesa has already indicated). Further DEKC Maritime, our design partner, is working with a manufacturer to configure the vessel to carry four tower sections.
In the larger turbine scenarios, the Eleanor would make two trips (one with the tower sections and the other carrying the nacelle and blades). An even more efficient scenario is the build of two Eleanor vessels. When one is actively feeding the WTIV, the other would be in port, gathering the next set of components to be installed.
Interestingly, in the December 2020 United States Government Accountability Office report to the congressional committees on Offshore Wind, feeders received a strong endorsement. The report stated the following, “A project developer and a turbine supplier told us that for efficient operations, a project developer would use two to three sets of feeder vessels—depending on the site’s distance from port—to keep the WTIV continuously supplied with turbines and other components, allowing the WTIV to operate with minimum downtime. Each feeder set would have sufficient capacity to carry the components for one turbine. If large feeders were used, a set could consist of a single vessel. However, because turbine components may be too heavy or too large for all the components of one turbine to be transported on one feeder vessel, a set may need to consist of multiple smaller vessels. … A range of industry stakeholders told us that, for some projects, the ability to make full use of a Jones Act-compliant WTIV may be limited by factors such as port infrastructure … under some circumstances, the use of a feeder method could allow projects to be installed more quickly by reducing the amount of time that the WTIV spends in transit.”
Green Shipping Line’s Eleanor vessel can feeder both foreign and U.S. Jones Act compliant WTIVs (JURs) with wind tower components from all our ports. Instead of feedering components to super ports as in Europe, here in the U.S. we plan to feed a JUR from all our existing ports.
Ingenuity is an American trait. We will make use of what we have and improvise!