Marine South East (MSE) and Sustainable Marine Energy (SME) have concluded the ‘SAMED’ project to develop a novel low cost screw-in subsea anchor technology.
SAMED was conceived by Marine South East as a means of reducing significantly the high cost of installing offshore and marine renewable energy devices. Screw piles have for many years been deployed into dry and wet soils, and small piles have also been deployed in coastal waters. In principle, the technology should be useable for seabed anchoring to replace gravity anchors and impact piling of foundations.
MSE identified the sub-sea installation rig as a critical part of the system, as this would determine speed of installation, pile size restrictions (and load capacity), and size of the support vessel required. The SAMED project was developed to prototype an installation rig in order to create proof of concept for the technology.
SME undertook the engineering and marine operations aspects of the project whilst MSE conducted market assessment and commercialisation planning. This work has shown a substantial and growing market for SAMED, particularly in the offshore wind, marine energy and offshore aquaculture sectors.
Cost analysis has shown that the SAMED anchor technology could be highly competitive with traditional gravity anchor approaches. At realistic pricing and market penetration levels, a payback of less than 1 year should be achievable.
The SAMED consortium are exploring options to provide the additional engineering resources for moving from proof of concept to full commercial demonstration.