PelaStar: Revolutionizing Floating Offshore Wind with Tension Leg Platforms

We talk with Ben Ackers, CEO of PelaStar, a company revolutionizing
the industry with their tension leg platform design. PelaStar's
innovative technology provides stability for large wind turbines in
deep water conditions, paving the way for cost-effective and
efficient floating wind farms at scale. Visit https://pelastar.com/
for more info! Sign up now for Uptime Tech News, our weekly email
update on all things wind technology. This episode is sponsored
by Weather Guard Lightning Tech. Learn more about Weather
Guard's StrikeTape Wind Turbine LPS retrofit. Follow the
show
on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Linkedin and visit
Weather Guard on the web. And subscribe to Rosemary Barnes'
YouTube channel here. Have a question we can answer on the
show? Email us! Pardalote Consulting -
https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech -
www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: Welcome to the special edition of the Uptime Wind Energy
Podcast. I'm your host, Allen Hall, along with my co host, Joel
Saxum. With the increasing demand for clean energy, offshore wind
has become a crucial component in the global energy mix. However,
many of the world's best wind resources are located in deep waters
where traditional fixed bottom foundations are not feasible. And
this is where PelaStar comes in. PelaStar is changing the floating
offshore wind industry with their 10 leg platform design, which
provides stability for large wind turbines in deep water
conditions. Our guest today is Ben Ackers Chief Executive Officer
at PelaStar. Ben brings a wealth of experience in the maritime
industry to lead PelaStar's efforts in making floating offshore
wind a reality on a large scale. Ben, welcome to the show. Thanks
for having me. There's a lot to talk about because with the recent
auctions or the outlines of some offshore wind sites off the coast
of Maine, and then obviously off the coast of California, floating
wind is going to be huge in the United States, and it's already
becoming something of an item over in Europe. You at PelaStar have
been trying to answer some of the problems that we have with
floating offshore wind and maybe you can just give us a little bit
of background on PelaStar and what you're working on right now. Ben
Ackers: Absolutely. First of all, PelaStar is, as you said, a
tension leg platform which sets it apart from a lot of the platform
technologies that you'll see that have been deployed in
demonstration and pilot projects. We're really the next generation
of technology that the industry needs to bring down the cost of
energy for utility scale floating wind farms. We started developing
PelaStar around 2009. The idea comes out of our parent company,
Glosten, which is a naval architecture, marine engineering
consulting firm headquartered in Seattle. We've been around for
over 65 years. And as our engineers were looking at the challenge
of how do we put turbines offshore? We evaluated the different
archetypes of the time. Semi submersible spars. And ultimately
landed on tension leg platform is what we thought would be the best
way to bring down the price of energy in the long run by developing
platforms that have the lowest mass and the least amount of motion
to drive down capex and operating costs. Joel Saxum: So a quick
question then there, we'll dive right into it is you highlighted
what you believe the Or what in, it's physics, right? But what the
tension leg platform has advantages over some of the other
technologies that are out there, because like we, we talked about a
little bit off air there's a lot of options and ideas and
demonstrators and stuff, but nobody has really taken that the front
runner, the pole position in the race for what's going to be built
at scale in offshore floating. So that's The tension leg platform
idea. What are the advantages of it over some of the others? Ben
Ackers: Principally, the classic advantages of a tension leg
platform are that you can design a platform, a hull with the lowest
mass of any of the systems because we're not using the platform
itself to provide stability to the turbine. We simply need less
mass. steel or as others might use concrete to provide that
stability. And then we're stabilizing the platform with tendons
that are vertically stiff so that we have very little vertical
motion and very little rotation of the system because it's
basically a rid, effectively a rigid structure in the vertical
direction. Now it does, it is soft in the horizontal direction, so
there is some movement back and forth. But ultimately. By
restraining that motion, we provide the turbine with an ideal
environment for operation. So we keep motions down low enough so
that turbine is producing power and with an efficiency equivalent
to if you'd put that turbine on a monopile. Joel Saxum: That that's
hugely important, right? Because we're, you mentioned CapEx in, a
couple of minutes ago, but OpEx, because Allen and I, we were
always talking, we're all engineers at heart and thinking, you got
this turbine up there and now you've introduced a few more degrees
of freedom with some of the floaters, right? We're talking Highwind
Scotland and stuff like that, where now you used to have the
monopile and you have a little bit of movement in it, but now you
have this and all kinds of rotation and all those things. So you're
actually it's possible in my mind that you guys are taking out some
of the future O& M costs by possibly saving on bearings or
rotating equipment by lowering some of that movement. Ben Ackers:
That's absolutely what we'll leave, but it goes beyond just
reducing wear and tear on the turbine, which is obviously really
important, but it's also about accessibility and workability,
right? Because in the conditions in which we're maintaining
offshore wind turbines today even in shallow water, where we're
using SOVs with walk to work gangways, CTVs, daughter craft to
board the platforms, our platform is not moving. And with our
central column design, we present as a monopile. So you just
translate all of those things that have already been matured in
offshore wind today. And we can use those same systems, same
procedures, same equipment to get people on and off the platform.
Whereas other platforms that have more motion, that becomes a
greater challenge. So we're either those platforms are, you're
either going to have to limit. The times that you can actually
access the platform because of that motion, or you need to build
more robust equipment to deal with the relative motions between the
platform itself and the vessels you're using to access it. And
that's all going to cost money. And then once you get people on the
platform if the platform's moving, they can simply just get less
done. They're less efficient versus being on a stable platform to
get their work done. Allen Hall: So the basic PelaStar design I've
seen on your website, and your website is fantastic by the way,
people should go there, check it out, just go to PelaStar, I think,
PelaStar. com, and you can see all the details there's basically a
monopile type tower, and there's five steel legs coming off to the
side, like spider, and then there's tension lines going all the way
down to the bottom of the ocean. It's that simple. And the one of
the unique features I thought was the ability to transfer the
components to the assembly site, like everything can be barged up.
So you don't have, you can make the system pretty much anywhere,
put it on a ship, haul it to the site and assemble it right at the
coast line, I assume at a dock and then just tug it out to where
you need to be. So you've thought about this from a lot of
different aspects. It's really simple. But it does a very difficult
task at the same time. There's always that fine line. Where's all
the magic in all this? Is, there's always that real, that piece
that makes it all tie together. Is it the tension lines? Is it the
anchors that make all this possible? Ben Ackers: First of all,
simplicity is The the cornerstone of our design philosophy that in
order to take advantage of the TLP, this low mass structure, our
goal is to leave as little complexity in the water as possible. And
a lot of times people will say, it looks too simple. There's gotta
be, there's gotta be something more to it. And there is a lot to
it. So first of all, there, there are so many factors to consider
in design that you already know how hard it is to design for
turbines, either even on land or Fixed offshore turbines the
interaction with the environment and the complexity of the turbine,
its loads, the wind loads, the control system, all of that requires
a lot of work and a lot of fine tuning. And you can't just go to a
clean sheet of paper, draw a platform and see if that works. It, it
takes a lot of iteration, a lot of optimization to bring this all
together. Now there's certainly complexities to address a platform
like PelaStar that's designed for excellent operation and low
construction cost is one that is also harder to install. And so our
some of where that secret sauce is, how do we get that platform
that when the, those arms go underwater. It loses stability. How do
we get it installed? So we've developed an installation system
called crawl down installation where we float the platform out to
the site. And then we deploy tendons with the platform and those
tendons are extra long, longer than they have to be. So that we can
grab onto those with tools we call jacking tools and actually pull
the platform down to its installed draft. And then we can remove
those excess lengths of the tendon, remove all the special tooling
that is that, that is complex, get that off the platform so it
doesn't stay at sea. So we don't have to buy 500 copies of that
equipment, take it to the next platform. reuse it for installation.
But I, you asked what about the tendons?