SeaEnergy is pleased to announce that it has signed an exclusivity agreement with Ampelmann, a high-tech offshore access solutions developer, to secure use of Ampelmann’s ship-based self stabilizing platforms. This agreement takes SeaEnergy an important step closer to the launch of a marine services business aimed at providing support services for the construction, commissioning and operations & maintenance phases of offshore wind farms.
SeaEnergy plans to use the Ampelmann platforms aboard Ulstein X-BOW vessels, enabling SeaEnergy’s marine services business to provide greater levels of access and cost efficiencies to offshore wind turbine developers and operators than are currently available to them. The Company also recently signed a letter of intent with Ulstein to co-develop new service vessels for the offshore wind industry.
The integration of the Ulstein X-Bow vessel and the Ampelmann platform system will help to maximise the time that wind farm developers can put technicians onto offshore turbines, thus minimising the periods when turbines are not producing electricity and maximising their revenues. Enhanced access to offshore turbines will also allow construction and commissioning phases to be shortened and offshore wind farms to start generating earlier.
The SeaEnergy vessel system will permit night-time operations and also enables significantly greater levels of access for maintenance in challenging conditions, particularly important in winter when access is often at its most difficult and potential production is at its greatest. The combined Ampelmann and X-Bow system is capable of staying at sea 24 hours a day, seven days a week, providing access to wind turbines virtually all year round.
The Ampelmann platform is specifically designed to actively compensate for vessel motions and is the only platform of this type that does not require a docking station to
be pre-fitted on the turbine structures. While the base of the Ampelmann platform is mounted on the deck of a vessel, its motion stabilising technology means the top of the platform remains stationary and the gangway easily deployed, allow safe transfers in seas of up to 4m. This enables greater accessibility to offshore wind turbines, significantly improving safety, speed and ease of transferring crews to and from the vessel and more than 25,000 transfers on 110 different offshore structures have taken place to date.
The agreement was signed in Rotterdam by Steve Remp, Executive Chairman of SeaEnergy PLC and Jan van der Tempel, Chief Executive Officer of Ampelmann and covers an area comprising UK territorial waters, the North Sea, the Irish Sea, the English Channel and the Baltic Sea. SeaEnergy can maintain the exclusivity arrangement for up to five years by placing orders for a series of Ampelmann systems
Steve Remp, Executive Chairman of SeaEnergy PLC said:
“This is an important agreement for SeaEnergy as we establish our marine services business aimed at offering greater efficiencies to customers in the expanding offshore wind industry. Ampelmann’s innovative technology, already proven in the oil industry, allows us to offer customers greater levels of accessibility to offshore structures, in the most challenging of conditions, providing a solution for one of the key issues for the industry today.”
Jan van der Tempel, Chief Executive Officer of Ampelmann, said:
“The Ampelmann was originally developed for offshore wind turbine service and maintenance. It therefore gives me great pleasure to join forces with SeaEnergy today to deploy our technology in the offshore wind industry and help make offshore access as easy as crossing the street.”
In a separate development, SeaEnergy has been accredited as a supplier by the Achilles Joint Qualifications System (JQS) in Norway and Denmark. The Achilles JQS is used by participating companies, including 20 major oil companies, wind developers and main contractors, as a basis for the preparation of bidder lists, including the pre-qualification process for offshore wind farm tenders on the Norwegian and Danish continental shelves. Qualification is achieved for products and services that comply with international quality standards and is recognition of SeaEnergy and its offering to the offshore industry.
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Source: seaenergy-plc, August 11, 2010;