Spring Balanced Offshore Access Bridge (Seaqualizer)

Background
Existing solutions for accessing wind turbines during high seas states are inherently unsafe and expensive energy guzzlers with limited operating window and load capacity. By combining modern hydro-pneumatics with the old métier of spring balance, a technology bringing significant improvements to these drawbacks is developed.

Objective
This project will build, test and analyze a prototype of the Seaqualizer, a spring balanced access bridge for safe, low-cost and energy efficient transfer of staff and cargo to wind-turbines. The Seaqualizer will increase their accessibility to >95%, decreasing downtime and the cost of installation, maintenance & intervention, leading to SDE+ savings of >€80 mln (2017-2023).

Short description of activities
Marin will build and test the prototype in a tank simulation, advancing the technology from TRL4 to TRL5. ECN and IHC will be involved in the design and evaluation of the prototype in order to assess its technical feasibility and the benefits of the innovation compared to existing solutions.

Results
The project has enabled the project partners to define the key design parameters required to build a full-scale prototype of the Seaqualizer. This full-scale prototype is to be co-designed, engineered, built and tested by strategically well positioned player(s) in the offshore access market, advancing the technology to TRL6 and validating the generic technology of spring balanced offshore motion compensation.

See also: SeaQualizer Prototype