The design of the suction bucket jacket, developed by DONG Energy, has been tailor-made specifically to tackle these challenges. The suction bucket jacket design consists of three legs welded together in a jacket structure, standing on top of three giant suction buckets anchoring the foundation to the seabed.
It is a lightweight structure that only requires a single operation when the foundation is installed offshore, reducing the time of the installation and hence contributing to lowering the costs of electricity from offshore wind. The new foundation concept has been developed by DONG Energy in cooperation with Carbon Trust Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA) in the UK and marks the beginning of a new technological plateau in the construction of turbines offshore. The German offshore wind project Borkum Riffgrund 1 in Germany has been selected for testing this foundation due to its sandy seabed, which makes the installation of this concept a challenge. Challenging test conditions provide a more solid case for the evaluation of the concept. The suction bucket jacket is equipped with a comprehensive monitoring system providing data. The OWA project partners, E.ON, Mainstream Renewable Power, Iberdrola/ScottishPower Renewables, Statkraft and Statoil, will get full insight into these data and also have full access to the fabrication and installation of the new foundation design. This will allow them to evaluate whether it should be used in the UK. The data will also be analysed in a separate joint research project between the Leibniz University of Hannover, the German BAM Institute (Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing) and DONG Energy. In October this year, a 3.6MW turbine from Siemens Wind Power will be installed on top of the foundation.
