GREEN REBEL DEPLOYS KEY TECHNOLOGY FOR NORTH SEA FLOATING WIND FARM

A floating offshore wind farm project off the east coast of Scotland has reached a major milestone with the deployment of technology to collect data about wind speeds, wave heights, and ocean currents at the proposed site.  Green Rebel, a Cork and Limerick based offshore survey service company, has successfully deployed its Floating LiDAR system which will remain in place for 12-months. 

Muir Mhòr is a joint venture between Fred. Olsen Seawind and Vattenfall located in the North Sea 70 km off the coast of Aberdeen. The floating wind farm is on track to be operational by 2030, subject to planning and grid infrastructure provision. 

Green Rebel was awarded the tender to carry out the MetOcean survey, signing the contracts in November and deploying its technology in February. The commencement of the survey is a key milestone for the Muir Mhòr project and the data collected will be used as part of the energy yield analysis and for engineering design of the wind turbine array. 

The Floating LiDAR Buoy is designed to operate autonomously at sea and uses laser technology to profile the speed of winds at heights of up to 300m. It also delivers data on waves, ocean currents and water quality. The data captured is sent back to shore, where a team of specialists can interpret it at Green Rebel’s dedicated MetOcean base in Limerick.

The total height of the assembled buoy is the same as a two-storey house and weighs as much as 11 family cars. It is currently operating in a part of the North Sea that is more than 70 metres in depth. The buoy weighs 15 tonnes and extends to 12 metres in height. Teams installed over 700 metres of mooring lines, the equivalent of four GAA pitches. 

David Hinshelwood, Project Director for Muir Mhòr Offshore Wind Farm said:  “The deployment of the Floating LiDAR and metocean instrumentation package is a big step forward for the Muir Mhòr Offshore Wind Farm project and we are pleased to be working with the offshore survey service innovators Green Rebel to mark this major milestone. This technology will gather a valuable dataset which will allow our project team to better understand the combined effect of winds, waves, currents and water quality – which has critical input in turn for the design of foundations, mooring systems and cables as well as planning and operational activities for various project phases. This milestone underlines our commitment to delivering a highly innovative offshore wind project which is on schedule to generate electricity in 2030 – putting the UK on track to meet its target of 5GW of floating wind by 2030.” 

Green Rebel Technical Director, John Wallace said: “We were delighted to partner with Fred. Olsen Seawind and Vattenfall on this project. Floating LiDAR systems are typically deployed during the summer months so deployment in the winter at these latitudes was a challenge that the Green Rebel team relished. Short weather windows and large waves at this time of year meant that towing a floating LiDAR solution was problematic and instead, we deployed the equipment directly off the back deck of our vessel using cranes.”  

The Green Rebel Floating LiDAR is one of a small number of solutions certified for this type of project and is the culmination of many years of experience. The solution is purpose built for this type of LiDAR data collection in the harshest of locations and has more redundancy, more buoyancy and more power than any other solution in the market.