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Cathie Associates study reduces noise at Arkona

By: Tom Russell 08/03/2018 Cathie Associates

Foundations General Windfarms

Cathie Associates performed a study which enabled the reduction of noise in the water column created by monopile driving at the Arkona offshore wind farm.

The study on noise reduction was performed during the planning of the monopile installation operations. It enabled the development of a hammer energy profile which allowed monopiles to be driven at reduced energy levels while still achieving required target penetration depth within the driving pile time restrictions applicable in Germany. This contributed to the reduction of the noise in the water column produced by the pile driving process, versus a more standard hammer energy profile.

Rui Silvano, one of Cathie Associates Senior Engineers worked closely with E.ON on the project: “We obviously understand the cost pressures facing our clients in the offshore wind industry. Because Noise Mitigation is a key industry issue with very high associated costs this seems an obvious area to focus.

Although reducing the energy will no doubt help reducing the resultant noise in the water column, the challenge was in achieving a fine balance: We had to ensure the recommended energy profile was optimised to drive the monopiles to the required depth within the 180 minute time restriction required by the BSH in Germany while verifying that the monopile fatigue during driving remained low despite the increased number of hammer blows associated with a reduced hammer energy."

The Arkona project is located 35km northeast of the island of Rügen. The wind farm will have a capacity of 385MW and is expected to be capable of supplying up to 400,000 households with renewable energy from 2019 onwards.

Van Oord's heavy-lift crane vessel Svanen was used to hammer the monopile foundations 40m deep into the seabed – at water depths ranging between 23-37m. Installation of the project's transition pieces was completed by Jumbo Offshore using heavy lift vessel Fairplayer.

Construction of the Arkona offshore wind farm in the German Baltic Sea is progressing ahead of scheduled according project developers, E.ON. The next steps include the installation of the Siemens Gamesa SWT-6.0-154 turbines which A2SEA's SEA CHALLENGER is lined up to complete.

Investment in the project amounts to €1.2bn and it is a joint venture between E.ON and the Norwegian energy company Statoil. Transmission system operator 50Hertz is responsible for the transmission of electricity from the project site to the onshore grid. The three companies will jointly use the platform.

For more information please follow the links provided. Alternatively click here for our interactive map.

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Cathie Associates study reduces noise at Arkona

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