‘The Carbon Trust today announced the launch of BLUE PILOT, a large-scale demonstration project aimed at reducing costs and underwater noise during construction of offshore wind farms as part of the Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA). The BLUE PILOT project will deploy The BLUE Hammer, a new type of pile driver developed by Fistuca BV., a Dutch technology company founded as a spin-off from Eindhoven University of Technology. It is anticipated that the project will enable potential lifetime savings of up to €33 – 40 million for a 720MW offshore wind farm, which is equal to a levelised cost of energy (LCoE) reduction of 0.9-1.2 €/MWh.

OWA partners E.ON, EnBW, Ørsted, Statoil and Vattenfall, alongside additional industry partners Fistuca, Van Oord, Shell and Sif are contributing €3.2 million funding to the project. Due to the project’s ability to impact the cost of offshore wind RVO, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency, has also granted public subsidies of over €2.5 million.

The BLUE Hammer is predicted to reduce underwater noise levels by up to 20 dB (SEL), and potentially reduce the fatigue damage during installation on the pile by up to 90 percent. This could not only remove the need for underwater noise mitigation, but also enable secondary steel to be pre-welded to the monopile before installation, potentially unlocking ‘transition piece free’ designs. Furthermore, by reducing the amount of time and number of operations carried out offshore, the innovative piling method would improve health and safety and result in a significantly lower installation cost.’ Click here to read more