Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore Certification activities for Floating Offshore Wind Products

BUREAU VERITAS MARINE & OFFSHORE IS AN ACCREDITED CERTIFICATION BODY

In July 2024, Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore has been accredited by the french national accreditation body COFRAC. COFRAC has assessed the compliance of Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore against the international standard ISO/IEC 17065 "Conformity assessment requirements for bodies certifying products, processes and services". The scope of COFRAC accreditation and the general procedure for Floating Offshore Wind are available to the links below:

Accreditation certificate N° 5-0677 rév.0 for certification of wind turbines and wind turbines components and of wind farm projects offshore.

This information is also available on the COFRAC website www.cofrac.fr
General Procedure for Certification of Offshore Wind Turbines Types Components and Projects

Integrity, Ethic, Impartiality and Independence are at the core of Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore values. Therefore all employees involved in certification activities have signed a “Non conflict of Interest” letter. This letter is a binding document which guarantees along with our organisation, procedures, controls and monitoring by an Impartiality Committee, that all certification activities respect these core values. The link below provides with the commitment CEO of Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore CEO with regards to requirements of Quality, Confidentiality, Transparency and Impartiality for the certification activities.
Commitment policy for Wind offshore products certification

The treatment of any claim or appeal with regards to the certification process or certificate issuance is thoroughly handled by the certification manager of Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore. The latter will be in direct contact with the complainant to address the issue.

The claim can be addressed to claim.certificationFOW@bureauveritas.com

WHAT IS CERTIFICATION?

Certification is the process of assessing the conformity of a product, system or service with the requirements and characteristics outlined in a standard, specification or regulation.
These standards or specifications are published by recognized international bodies and serve to provide proof that a product, system or service is safe and performs as promised.

WHY UNDERGO CERTIFICATION?

Certification is not a mandatory administrative requirement for products, systems or services, although for certain systems, such as marine units, national authorities may make it compulsory. Rather, certification is usually requested by insurance companies in order to lower the level of risk and, subsequently, decrease the insurance premium. It is also requested by lenders to provide the needed confidence in the financing process. On a more general level, certification is a common practice within certain industries to guarantee consistency of design and manufacturing across all subcontractors, as well as to ensure that best practices have been properly implemented.

APPLYING CERTIFICATION TO FOW

Certification for all offshore wind components can be applied in three different scopes. These are clearly defined in Bureau Veritas Guidance Note N1631 (Certification Scheme for Marine Renewable Energy Technologies), and in the documents published by the International Electrotechnical Commission for Renewable Energies (IECRE) certification procedures, and are as follows:

Component certification: applies to designers and manufacturers of components such as blades, gearboxes, towers, etc.
Type certification: applies to wind turbine designers and manufacturers,
Project certification: applies to wind farm developers, and seeks to ensure that the FOW turbine design, and the consequent specific supplied units are manufactured, transported, installed and operated in compliance with certain requirements and are suitable for the specific site conditions.

Applying these different types of certification to FOW, however, comes with a number of challenges. This is mostly due to the fact that FOW turbines are particularly complex.

Not only do they feature a large number of components with varying degrees of technological maturity, but they also involve a wide variety of stakeholders, from design and construction all the way to installation and operation.

Conformity assessments can be carried out on the basis of international standards for wind energy generation systems established by the IEC or on the basis of technical standards developed by Bureau Veritas Marine & Offshore

FOW PROJECT CERTIFICATION

Project certification can be divided into two main phases:

Design, including verification of the project developer's site conditions assessment, reviewing the basis of the project design to ensure appropriate applicable standards and norms and sound methodologies, and examining the site-specific loads, as well as the entire wind turbine design for conformity with the design basis.
Construction, installation and commissioning, to ensure that these operations are carried out in full respect of manuals, procedures and established safety standards Optionally, project characteristics, such as power curves, can be certified.
Certification of the Operation and Maintenance module can be maintained during the in-service phase.

The different modules that make up the project certification process are given in the figure below.