TWO companies at the forefront of the global offshore wind industry have turned to a team of UK experts as they seek to bring more developments to fruition.
TEPCO Renewable Power Inc. (TEPCO RP), one of Japan’s largest utility providers and Marine Power Systems (MPS) have signed contracts to utilise Kinewell’s ForeCoast® Marine software.
By simulating marine operations and entire sea campaigns with historical metocean data and real-world operational constraints, ForeCoast® Marine allows project teams to envisage how potential offshore wind developments would have performed across previous seasons.
British cleantech scale-up Kinewell acquired ForeCoast® Marine earlier this year to build on its existing software solutions which, over the past decade, have helped developers the world-over save millions of pounds and hundreds of hours during the development of offshore wind farms.
By providing developers, contractors, operators and consultants with actionable insights, helping them forecast the uncertainty of future developments and make informed decisions that de-risk projects, company chiefs believe the software will play a key role in helping the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) realise its goal of reaching a global capacity of 2TW by 2030.
Tony Appleton, Chief Commercial Officer at Kinewell, said: “We are thrilled to have entered into strategic partnerships with MPS and TEPCO RP for the deployment of the ForeCoast® Marine software.
“Both organisations work on incredibly complex, high-value projects where precision, quality and schedule discipline are crucial to success and ForeCoast® Marine will provide their teams with the tools and advice required to make the most informed, evidence-based decisions.
“We look forward to working with them to realise their investment ambitions and further support the global transition to green energy.”
TEPCO Holdings, Inc, one of Japan’s largest energy providers, has ambitions to ensure it generates over 60% of its electricity from carbon-free power sources over the next 10 years. As part of this strategy, TEPCO RP assumed TEPCO’s renewable energies business in April 2020 and became an independent company dedicated solely to the renewable power business.
The transition will see the company continue to invest in renewable energy sources, particularly offshore wind, and company chiefs are hopeful that utilising ForeCoast® Marine will help accelerate their plans.
Ryunosuke Naito at TEPCO RP, said: “We use ForeCoast Marine as part of our efforts to optimise offshore construction schedules, enabling us to analyse even complex construction sequences. As a result, we can efficiently evaluate offshore installation cycles that have a significant cost impact and are critical to project success, greatly improving the clarity of schedule assessments for both ongoing and new projects.”
Marine Power Systems (MPS) is a leading developer of deepwater offshore wind platform systems that utilise novel, yet efficient, solutions for offshore platform installation and wind turbine integration. ForeCoast has been an integral part of the development toolkit and has been used to assess in detail the relative merits of various offshore operations methodologies.
Dr Stephen Norris, operations director at MPS said: “Using ForeCoast has allowed us to gain feedback regarding the likely impact on marine operations at an early stage in the development process, bringing forward these critical insights. More recently we have used ForeCoast to assist developers to understand the improvements in overall project timescales and costs using our technology which has been incredibly helpful for both parties.”
Image: From left to right Kinewell CTO Dr Henna Bains, Kinewell CEO & Founder Dr Andrew Jenkins, MPS Operations Director Dr Stephen Norris and Kinewell CCO Tony Appleton.
