Knud E. Hansen has expanded its portfolio with a new wind turbine maintenance platform: the “jack-up on jack-up” concept.
This four-legged jack-up vessel features a 15 m-wide working platform that can be elevated to the height of the nacelle, allowing for blade maintenance work and eliminating the need for hazardous rope access.
Measuring 154 m in length and 64.4 m in breadth, this vessel is designed for all kinds of maintenance work on wind turbines up to 20 MW, including replacement and handling of nacelles weighing as much as 1,000 tonnes at a hub height of 175 m, and managing blades up to 130 m long. This can be done while it is jacked up in 80 m water depth.
The concept includes a telescopic weather cover fitted on the platform, as well as a workshop. When the weather cover is deployed, a virtual factory hall is created around the blade, allowing all types of work to be performed on it, minimising the need to remove the blades and transport them to shore for repair.
Additionally, with the possibility of inserting an X-Y motion compensating system between the work platform and the platform carriers, the “factory hall” can remain geostationary. A “cherry picker” mounted on a hammer head at the platform’s opposite end provides access to the nacelle.
The main crane is fitted on the elevating structure, allowing for a conventional pedestal-mounted crane with a boom approximately 30 percent shorter than a typical wind turbine maintenance vessel. This design is currently patent pending.
