contentWorks™

It doesn’t take an engineering degree to work out that a longer boom can’t lift as much as a shorter one, all things being equal. But the cranes on board SEA INSTALLER and SEA CHALLENGER were dimensioned to lift foundations, so we’re still operating at around half of their full capacity. By 2020, we expect turbine components to top out at some 550 tons, still leaving us with 150 tons of lifting capacity.

We’re living in an increasingly competitive world and, as a leading maritime nation that wants to stay up with the play, Denmark needs to review one particular aspect of its regulatory framework: seafarer taxation. While more conventional vessels are covered by favourable taxation rules, it’s becoming more and more important for this to be extended to specialised vessels operating in offshore industries.

The current CFD auctions apply to projects that start in 2020 and run to 2023. That’s the first major change I’d like to point to – that we are now tendering for projects up to 5 years ahead of the day installation actually begins – instead of the two years or so that was typical back in, say, 2013 or 2014.

It’s commonly said that the only difference between men and boys is the size of their toys. So it may seem completely backwards to have a room of fully grown offshore wind people playing with tiny LEGO block models to help coordinate the installation of some of the biggest ‘toys’ in the world: offshore wind turbines.