Go beyond the basics. Learn how to assess the readiness of a port's infrastructure and gain the insights into what's essential versus nice-to-have in order to make informed decisions about improvement works.
This course is under development. Provide your name and email and I'll let you know when it's available. If you see something missing that you'd like to see included, let me know and I'll try to add it in.
The perfect port does not exist. Most ports were designed for purposes other than offshore wind. Each has limitations and trade-offs between capability, cost and what construction and logistics philosophies developers will be able to employ. These vary by component and technical package (i.e. turbines, foundations, cables, substations).
Going beyond the simplistic metrics of hectares, ground capacity and berths, this course builds participants ability to assess a port's capability to support the functions needed by fixed foundation and floating offshore wind farms during their construction phase.
The courses is presented across 10 hrs of in-depth videos, split into easily digestible 10-20 min topic segments and accompanied by helpful PDF downloads and examples. This allows you to progress at your own pace and dip in-and-out as work commitments allow. By the end you'll:
Be able to identify and understand the potential limitations of a port for specific components or operations
Understand how critical (or not) any limitations might be to a port's utilisation by offshore wind
Understand what improvement options might be available to partially or fully remove such limitations.
Have an understanding of the value specific features or improvements might have to developers and to the port itself
Level: No prior industry or technical knowledge is required. The course is intended for ports, those who work with port infrastructure and wind developers' package teams looking to better understand how the port can impact developers plans and vice-versa with a view to helping each being developed with the constraints of the other in mind.
Format: Online self-directed learning. Content available for twelve months from date of purchase.
Cost: To be confirmed at time of course release.
Before getting into the detail of specific port operations, this module sets the scene by exploring the characteristics of the local environment, physical features, layout and current use of the port that might help or hinder the ability to support the construction phase of one or more offshore wind packages.
Here we'll explore the key characteristics of the in-port lifting operations common in offshore wind farm construction and examine how quay, berth and wider port design as well as the local environment could affect their feasibility or efficiency and what can be done about it. We'll also address what impact specific limitations might have on a developer's ability to use the port and how critical these are.
Offshore wind projects can involve hundreds of RORO operations. This makes a port that enables these to be conducted safely and repeatedly crucial to success. In this module we'll investigate the principles of safe RORO operations by Self-Propelled Modular Transporter (SPMT) and how specific characteristics of the berth and quay design as well as the local environment can affect such operation's feasibility for various vessel types and sizes, as well as what can be done to improve or mitigate this.
Some projects will find this essential. Others might benefit from the possibility of being able to marshal and partially or fully-assemble components on land or in port prior to taking them offshore. This module examines the use cases for these, how critical the capability is to developers and the requirements this might place on the port hosting them.
As fixed foundations get bigger and floating wind projects grow, the use of FLO-FLO operations to get structures into the water and use their own buoyancy for storage or the 'last-mile' transport will be increasingly common. This module looks how these operations work and at what features of a port can help or hinder them.
Having looked in detail at how to evaluate an existing port and examined potential upgrades and their value both to the port and the developer, we'll recap by taking a look at what the perfect port for floating or fixed foundation wind project might look like in two forms - the bare-minimum (most essential features only) and the all-singing-all-dancing super port!