Vattenfall adopts James Fisher’s pioneering marine project optimisation system, Mermaid®.

James Fisher Marine Services secures order from one of Europe’s leading energy companies, Vattenfall, for Mermaid® Vattenfall will utilise Mermaid® for the strategic planning of its offshore wind farm operations Mermaid® is a sophisticated marine project optimisation and weather risk mitigation system set to enable huge operational cost-savings James Fisher Marine Services, part of James[…]

Analysing Wind Farm Foundation Installation – Part 7: Two Vessels – The Division of Labour

In the last post we arrived at a strategy which we like, this being: Start our operations sometime in March. Use two vessels, unfortunately we can get the two we’d like though, so we’re using a slight cheaper, slightly less capable vessel as our second. Modify the capable vessel so it can carry more foundation[…]

Analysing Wind Farm Foundation Installation – Part 6: Work Faster – Two Vessels On Hire

As we’ve moved through this analysis process and applied Mermaid to the consideration of how we can baseline and improve our performance two main objectives have repeatedly arisen: Work entirely in the spring and summer to reduce winter downtime. Maximise the time spent performing offshore operations when favourable conditions occur by reducing the number of[…]

Analysing Wind Farm Foundation Installation – Part 5: Reduce Transits to Improve Performance – Offshore Resupplies

In this post we’re going to look at bringing the foundations to the installation vessel at site.  It’s thought that, as with carrying more components, we can increase the working time by transiting less.  If another vessel (a barge and tugs) brings components to the main vessel the transit requirements are reduced, although it’s worth[…]

Analysing Wind Farm Foundation Installation – Part 4: Improve Performance – Split Installation

In the last post in this series we identified that even with a larger carrying capacity, our work force was still unable to fully exploit the preferable summer weather and that all start options performed at least some work during the winter.  In this post we’re looking at splitting our installation process into two halves.[…]

Analysing Wind Farm Foundation Installation – Part 3: First Attempts to Improve Performance – Larger Carry

Continuing the series of posts on the analysis of offshore wind turbine installation methods, this post looks at the improvements, if any, which can be gained by increasing the carrying capacity of the installation vessel.  It is thought that time spent transiting between the vessels home port and the wind farm could be better spent[…]

Analysing Wind Farm Foundation Installation – Part 1: Introduction to Analysis

This is the first in a series of posts looking at how we can use Mermaid to: Analyse a large offshore operation; Make decisions about which vessels and strategies we want to use; Optimise our offshore operation. We’re going to perform a series of simulations to help determine what vessel and strategy we should use[…]