Ørsted Carries Out World's First Heavy-Lift Drone Deployment At Borssele 1&2 Offshore Wind Farm
Fredericia, Denmark - Danish energy company and offshore specialist Ørsted is deploying heavy lift cargo drones (HLCD) for the first time at the Borssele 1&2 offshore wind farm. Ørsted believes that reaching this milestone will lead to sustainable improvements in operational efficiency and safety in the offshore wind industry.
Service and maintenance by heavy-lift drone 10 to 15 times faster than by ship
After testing the concept at the Hornsea 1 offshore wind farm in the UK last year, Ørsted is now using heavy-lift drones with a weight of 70 kg and a wingspan of 2.6 meters to transport goods weighing up to 100 kg in an actual operational campaign for the first time at the Borssele 1&2 offshore wind farm complex in the Netherlands,
For this particular campaign, Ørsted has decided to upgrade some critical evacuation and safety equipment in each of the turbines. Normally, a vessel would travel from one wind turbine to the next and use a crane to lift a crate of equipment onto the transition piece. After that, the crate would be lifted by the nacelle's crane to reach the nacelle and then brought to the top of the turbine.
Instead, the drone will simply fly back and forth from an offshore supply vessel directly to the top of the nacelle.
The drone flight from the ship to the turbine takes around four minutes per turbine, whereas the conventional approach without the use of drones can take around six hours. Taking into account the ship transportation between the turbines and to and from the shore, Ørsted was able to complete the tasks at the Borssele offshore wind farm with the drone 10 to 15 times faster than normally.
"Ørsted has led offshore wind’s journey from a niche technology to a cost-competitive and large-scale source of renewable power. We’ve done this through some big leaps by for example pioneering new turbine models, but also by continuously moving a lot of new and innovative ideas from the drawing board to real life application. The drones at Borssele 1&2 are a great example of this, as they will improve safety, bring down carbon emissions, and reduce the cost of operating offshore wind farms, which all further improve the commercial fundamentals of offshore wind for investors, governments, and corporations," says Rasmus Errboe, Chief Commercial Officer and Deputy Chairman of the Board at Ørsted.
Ørsted drives technical innovation in the offshore wind sector
Ørsted sees the new technology as evidence of the company's approach to innovation, which has been a focus from the outset and has helped to transform offshore wind from a demonstration concept to a large-scale energy technology.
Ørsted believes that green energy can become more affordable, reliable, efficient and sustainable across the entire value chain through the use of cutting-edge technologies.
Ørsted believes that green energy can become more affordable, reliable, efficient and sustainable across the entire value chain through the use of cutting-edge technologies. Recently, Ørsted has tested a new technology that further optimizes the installation of monopiles for offshore wind turbines, and the Group has also deployed autonomous vessels for offshore surveying.
Ørsted has its own research and development capabilities with employees working on more than 300 different projects. The energy group cooperates with over 50 universities and research institutes to transfer the best ideas from the laboratory into practice.
Share falls in weak stock market environment
Like many other RENIXX shares, the Ørsted share fell sharply on the first two trading days of this week in the generally weak stock market environment.
On Tuesday evening, the Ørsted share was down 6.7 percent at a price of EUR 53.56. So far this morning, the share has gained ground and is currently trading at EUR 54.20, up 1.2 percent (09:07 a.m., August 7, 2024, Stuttgart Stock Exchange).
Source: IWR Online, Aug 08 2024