Spain’s Esteyco has teamed up with the Basque Research and Innovation Center Tecnalia to design a dynamic energy transmission cable as part of the Telwind floating wind platform project.
The collaboration is putting together Esteyco’s background in the design of offshore concrete platforms and Tecnalia’s experience in the design of umbilical cables for wave and tidal devices and floating wind platforms.
Esteyco is leading an EU-funded project to develop a Telwind floating platform, which, according to the company, will enable a qualitative leap to be taken in the reduction of costs in the construction and installation of deepwater wind farms.
The main objective of this task is to analyze several cable layouts to best suit the motions of the Telwind platform. The design also includes the definition of cable ancillaries such as buoyancy modules, bend stiffeners and protection against abrasion on the touchdown point.
The tailoring of this type of cables and of all the elements that ensure their integrity is vital to ensure the delivery of the energy generated to land; bearing in mind that they are going to be subjected to continuous movements, friction, tension, and therefore, a hostile environment, Tecnalia said.
“This collaboration with TECNALIA is bringing us the opportunity to strengthen our capabilities on the design of subsea cables for floating platforms. Our models performed with Ansys AQWA are aligned with the results obtained by TECNALIA,” Joaquín Urbano , naval architect at Esteyco, said.