The offshore wind market for O&M jack-up interventions has changed rapidly. In just two years, the total number of jack-up interventions had doubled from 125 in 2017, to 262 in 2019, and the interventions that were carried out by larger jack-up vessels has increased by almost 14 times during this same time period, according to the O&M Jack-Up Intervention Report recently released by Sea Impact, an intelligence tool for the offshore wind industry.
“I am proud to bring forward the Sea Impact intelligence that provides performance metrics not previously available across the industry,” says Lars Conradsen, co-founder of Sea Impact. “Developers, OEMs and vessel providers have previously had access to a subset of this information from their own projects but with our approach, we are able to create the insight across all offshore wind projects and aggregate the data for the industry as a whole. This provides for valuable benchmarks, market sizing opportunities as well as input to budgeting and scheduling activities.”
The increase in jack-up interventions can be seen as a result of one the newest generation of turbines requiring service by larger vessels as well as some vessels transitioning from installation to O&M as they are not capable of installing the next generation turbines.
The newest and next generation turbines will have better reliability but at the same time take longer to repair and replace the major components. However, with the general growth of the offshore wind industry the market for jack-up interventions is expected to continue to grow. Further, while the duration of major component replacement have been higher at the newest platforms, the increasing maturity approaches to major component replacements are expected to lead to downward trend in the duration of jack-up interventions.
Sea Impact’s approach to market intelligence of analyzing vessel position data (AIS data) is made possible due to the joint effort of two Danish offshore wind specialists – PEAK Wind and Lautec.
To learn more about Sea Impact’s O&M Jack-Up Intervention Report, click here.
Original source: North American Wind Power