UK-based Tugdock has formed a partnership with Sarens to accelerate the development of its solution for the floating offshore wind industry.
To further support the growth of Tugdock, Sarens has invested in the start-up, which has developed a floating dry dock that can be transported by road in a modular form and assembled at ports to dimensions far wider than most of the world’s existing dry docks. The Tugdock product line comes in a range of deck sizes from 12 m x 12 m up to 120 m x 120 m with a total lift capacity up to 35,000 tonnes.
Lucas Lowe-Houghton, director of business development for Tugdock, explained: “The floating offshore wind sector is expected to continue to grow rapidly. However, very few of the world’s ports have sufficient water depth and assembly quay space to build the huge turbine floaters required, and conventional dry docks are not wide enough as they were originally designed for ships. Tugdock’s patented marine buoyancy bag technology solves this issue.
“Our submersible floating dry docks can operate with as little as 5 m draft, enabling more efficient wind turbine floater construction. The platform is then towed to deeper water for launching of the turbines. More than 8 percent of the total cost of a floating offshore wind farm is accounted for by assembly and installation. So, any innovation that allows this process to be carried out more efficiently and quickly will have a big impact on profitability for developers.”
Carl Sarens, director of technical solutions, projects and engineering at Sarens, said: “Through this partnership with Tugdock, we are able to streamline the solution we offer to developers. By significantly reducing time and costs, our alliance will deliver a step change for wind turbine construction. In addition, Tugdock’s flexibility and reusability is useful to global developers as the units can be reused from one port or project to another regardless of changes in turbine size or foundation weight.”
