Marine Renewable Energy

Marine renewable energies (MRE) represent a sector in a state of rapid evolution. Offshore wind, both fixed and floating, is expected to contribute up to 9% of the global energy supply by 2050, according to the IEA. Tidal installations, and even floating solar fields, are also being designed and tested.

With so many developments, Bureau Veritas’ Research & Development (R&D) team has undertaken several projects to help ensure innovative MRE technologies meet technical and safety standards. We are helping to address mooring and structural integrity, and developing our in-house OPERA software to support MRE studies including floating wind turbines.

Our Projects

	OC7 #JIP #MRE OC7 is a research project managed by NREL. It is a new iteration following the Offshore Code Comparison Collaboration, Continued, with Correlation, and unCertainty (OC6) project. It aims to improve the modelling of hydrodynamic viscous loads for floating offshore wind platforms to validate the accuracy of load predictions (especially aerodynamic loads) in a wind farm, with a specific focus on the influence of the floater flexibility.
	OWA VERBATIM #JIP #MRE OWA Verbatim is a Joint Industry Project (JIP) led by the Carbon Trust to study the interaction between soil and foundation piles in fixed offshore wind turbines. Bureau Veritas will offer its third-party opinion and enrich its own technical knowledge from this study.
	OPTIFOWT #JIP #MooringIntegrity OptiFOWT is a JIP aiming to streamline the mooring and floater design phase of floating offshore wind turbines (FOWT) with a methodology to estimate short-term responses. Bureau Veritas will carry out sensitivity studies on floater and mooring configurations, as well as developing a guidance note to advise on a reliable design methodology.
	FLOWIND #JIP #MRE In this JIP lead by EM&I, we are participating in two working groups to investigate asset integrity inspections and the regulatory aspects of marine renewable energy technologies.

Our Software

OPERA #Software #MRE OPERA is our in-house independent simulation tool for Marine Operations including floating wind turbines, currently under development. It will take into account the full coupling extent between hydrodynamic and mooring loads, aerodynamic loads, the controller and any slender body element deformation.