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As the offshore industry becomes more robust, stakeholders are starting to see how cooperation, data-sharing, and experiential knowledge are key to successful operations and maintenance framework agreements.

In today’s offshore wind energy industry, optimisation of Operations and Maintenance (O&M) is greatly influenced by asset owners, turbine manufacturers and vessel owners.

Reducing costs of operation is critical to the long-term future of offshore wind energy. We need to see more cooperation between utilities, turbine manufacturers and vessel operators in optimising contracts, resources and standards across the industry if we are to see the efficiencies the industry demands.

The offshore wind industry has paid little attention to outage time. This claim is made by MAKE Consulting in a recently released report about offshore wind O&M in Northern Europe.

In what could signify a crossroads for the offshore wind industry, E.ON has internalised the O&M of offshore wind turbines at Scroby Sands. I spoke recently with Scroby Sands’ Operations Manager Keith Cooke about it, who told me the warranty period for these turbines was coming to an end, and instead of renewing the warranty, they decided to take on the maintenance themselves.

Establishing a safe foundation is a vital part of jack-up operations. The jack-up vessel needs to be supported by an absolutely solid foundation during the entire jack-up operation at any given site.

The Crown Estate has recently released its report focusing on how jack-up vessels can help bring down costs in the maintenance of offshore wind turbines.

As long as politicians delay long-term plans within sustainable energy and threaten to reopen the energy discussions at a political level, it’ll be impossible to reduce offshore wind energy prices.

Why are there fewer work accidents within teams of people who have worked together for a long time?

The Carbon Trust helps businesses, governments and the public sector with efforts to move to a sustainable, low carbon economy through carbon reduction, energy-saving strategies and commercialising low carbon technologies.