The Carbon Trust has 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. 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. In the BLUE PILOT project the hammer will be tested offshore at a location in Dutch waters. Sif will provide the monopile, and Van Oord will support the installation logistics. The other industry partners will provide funding and strategic advice into the project to ensure its relevance to future commercial projects. Click here to read the technical article we published in November 2017 about the BLUE Hammer.