Bureau Veritas (BV) has said it has been selected to carry out the project certification of Erebus floating wind farm in the Celtic Sea, in Wales, UK.
Located 44km from the Pembrokeshire coastline in up to 75 meters water depth, the 100MW Erebus project is expected to be fully operational by 2026 and deliver enough electricity to power 93,000 homes per year.
The Erebus project is the result of TotalEnergies teaming up with Simply Blue Group in a Joint Venture named Blue Gem Wind.
Principle Power Inc. will design the floating platforms, based on the latest generation of their Windfloat® technology. This floater concept received an “Approval in Principle” from BV in 2016.
The ballasted semi-submersible platform supports the latest generation multi-megawatt wind turbine generators. The three-column platform is moored with a five-line catenary mooring system and is equipped with a closed-loop ballast system to compensate for changes in mean wind velocity and direction.
BV will be providing independent verification and project certification in line with regulatory requirements. The scope of the evaluation includes all the design phases: site condition assessment, design basis evaluation, integrated load analysis and detailed design evaluation for all the components of the floating wind turbines, including the inter-array cables.
To support the design documentation review, BV will provide independent analysis leveraging its integrated modeling tool Opera – which accounts for all components of a floating asset or wind turbine, covering everything from mooring systems to blades. Opera addresses the complex physics of aero-hydro couplings and multi-body interactions and manages sea-keeping and station-keeping for floating structures, BV said.
BV’s certification scope is planned to include all post-design phases from manufacturing to operations, including Transportation & Installation (T&I) and commissioning.