With everyone looking forward to a new era of business, the main feeling at Offshore 2014 this year was one of optimism and huge excitement. Business is still quite slow.
But future plans look bright with turbine manufacturers getting their offshore products ready, and marine infrastructure is ready to support the growth.
Jussi Vanhanen, marketing director at The Switch shared three takeaways from the technology opening session led by Dr Andrew Garrad:
1. We need to build totally new business models
Areva’s Claudia Martens brought up how the industry needs to change its business models. We need open collaboration, which would allow for a strong learning curve to become more competitive. One great initiative would be to establish a fund to solve risk management issues. A warranty and liability equity fund could be a tool for that.
2. Lowering the cost of energy
New offshore turbines are bigger and better. Blades, nacelles, drive trains and towers have been optimized even for offshore wind and environment conditions, but still the cost of energy is too high. Everyone agreed that now is the time to standardize foundations and bring mass production benefits to the market.
3. Offshore is different
Siemen’s CTO Henrik Stiesdahl challenged everyone to think of how offshore is different from onshore. We underestimate the importance and cost of infrastructure. Lessons have been learned onshore, but we cannot copy everything. We need to engineer offshore from the scratch. This means some companies will become offshore specialists while others will always stay on dry land.
Not many people know that The Switch was actually born offshore. Our first products were made for offshore turbines, and now we already have a 10-year track record.
Press release, December 5, 2013; Image: theswitch