Opinion: Wind turbine capacity is soaring, and installation ships can't keep up!

Recently, at an offshore wind summit, offshore giant Jan De Nul said that offshore wind installation vessels have struggled to keep up with the pace of wind turbine capacity growth.

Bart Willems, head of the company's offshore wind business, expressed concern about the issue at the Global Offshore Wind Summit in Oslo.

Jan De Nul has been forecasting industry demand with a vision 15 years ahead, but when it comes to offshore wind, he said.

In order to cooperate with the construction of the world's largest offshore wind farm, Dogger Bank, Jan De Nul ordered the jack-up installation vessel "Voltaire" from COSCO SHIPPING Heavy Industries, which is equipped with a set of 3,200-ton main crane, with an operating depth of about 80 meters and a payload of about 14,000 tons, making it the world's largest offshore wind power installation vessel.

Then, shortly after Voltaire had just begun its first mission, installing a GE Haliade-X 13MW for Dogger Bank, Jan De Nul discovered that offshore wind turbine capacity had soared and that the installation vessel could be phased out within a few years.

"Fifteen years ago, if someone had told everyone that there would be a 1,500-ton monopile, he would have been ridiculed. However, now we find out that in the future there may be 4,500 tons of monopiles. ”

In the past two years, the "wind turbine capacity arms race" between OEMs has been very fierce, and he called on the wind power industry to develop a set of standards to limit the rapid growth of wind turbine size and capacity, which does not need to be very precise, but at least in line with certain laws.

"It doesn't matter if the wind turbine capacity is 15MW, 20MW, 22MW or more, the important thing is that we can know through the standard what the capacity cap is at a certain point in time."