Mojo Maritime will introduce its Mermaid (Marine Economic Risk Management Aid) software at this year’s EWEA Offshore event in Frankfurt, Germany.
The Mermaid is a validated software tool for the analysis of weather risk on offshore operations in the demanding environments experienced at marine energy sites, such as Round 3 wind farms and the Pentland Firth tidal developments.
Installation cost and risk is a major factor in the long term viability of offshore marine projects particularly Round 3 Wind and Tidal Energy arrays. Cost reduction is necessary for these technologies to evolve. Unfortunately, cost reduction often involves increased risk – which can be very difficult to evaluate- lessons are nearly always learned the hard way with cost overruns, poor project/ contract management and weak installation strategies. This has led to the development of this new planning software tool.
Mermaid has been created through years of hard earned operational experience and combines sound offshore installation practice with advanced statistical analysis techniques.
Mermaid considers all phases of an operation, including on and offshore work, vessel transit, mooring, dynamic positioning and jacking operations and the response to storm events. Mermaid is geo-spatially aware and utilizes multiple working locations, Metocean data sets and transit routes to consider diverse operations such as array installation.
By analyzing work with multiple vessels, simultaneous operations and detailed operational tasks Mermaid models operations in a realistic manner. By considering multiple options, such as installation methods, device or foundation types or alternative vessels and ports, Mermaid can be used to select the most appropriate options for offshore work. This process leads to efficient project optimization, cost reduction and provides a robust engineering baseline to start prior to engaging expensive offshore assets.
Mojo Maritime’s Managing Director, Richard Parkinson , said: “We are starting to feel real benefits of using Mermaid- this tool allows us to clearly demonstrate and justify decisions to our client using very thorough installation models- we can run multiple scenarios rapidly. it has been particularly effective in developing tidal arrays and evaluating new techniques for offshore wind.”
Press release, November 12, 2013; Image: cornwallmarine