Marine vessel design company HeavyLift@Sea has collaborated with offshore service provider SeaRenergy to create an innovative new offshore assistance vessel (OAV), which effectively leverages the expertise of both organisations.
Designed for efficiency and comfort
The vessel was developed in accordance with state of the art ship design focusing on minimisation of losses during operation but still with a cost efficient propulsion arrangement (ERN 99,99,99,95) with low fuel consumption and maintenance cost.
The shape of the vessel is designed to reduce motions and increase comfort for technicians in order to mitigate risk of sea sickness and weather downtime, especially in the harsh conditions of the North Sea.
It accommodates up to 60 persons in comfortable single cabins, embedded in a true passenger ship class vessel including two day rooms, auditorium and a fitness room.
Maximised utilisation of vessel and technicians
The vessel focusses on efficiency in O&M and is therefore able to stay on location for several weeks offering more working time and less time in transit.
The configuration enables an efficient flow of people and spare parts around the vessel.
The motion compensated gangway, which is accessible directly from the elevator grants direct access to wind turbines and offshore platforms in significant wave heights of up to 2.5m, arranged for workability at water levels of +/- 4.0m around MSL.
With the cargo transfer system, a barrier-free handling of spare parts and components of is possible up to 300kg without using a crane.
Moreover, the vessel is equipped with a daughter craft in its own hangar at the stern. The daughter craft shall be utilised as a second way of access to the boat landing of offshore structures.
The hangar increases the safety of operation, especially in rough weather conditions.
New vessel class with attractive outlook for investors
Analysts estimate that the SOV market has a potential of 25-40 SOVs until 2020, whereas Offshore Wind is expected to grow to 23.5GW, tripling current installed capacity by 2020.
HeavyLift@Sea managing director Hendrik Groene said: "Our new design already reflects the new requirements regarding sea-keeping behavior and comfort for technicians combined with cost reductions will lead to increasing demand in SOVs.
"We see already, that this new vessel class replaces older units coming from the oil and gas segment."
SeaRenergy managing director Dr Benjamin Vordemfelde added: "The O&M market is only starting, and therefore demand for SOVs will grow with commissioned wind farms.
"SOVs are an attractive market segment with an excellent perspective offering stable growth and attractive charters.
"Therefore, we see the market entry into the SOV segment as the logical next step to develop our company further and also meet the growing demand for this new vessel class."
About the vessel
- Vessel length: 72m, consideration of wave lengths in the North Sea
- Passenger ship class (requirement of MLC 2006 is fulfilled)
- Less failure probability of the components
- Cost-efficient arrangement
- Lowest possible maintenance costs
- DP (requirement of ERN 99,99,99,95 is fulfilled)
- Gangway, arranged for workability at Hs = 2.5m and water levels of +/- 4.0m around MSL
- Direct access from elevator to gangway
- Handling of larger components (ca. 300 kg) independent from the crane
- Equipped with a cargo hold for the dry and save storage
- The hatch covers can be operated with the vessels own crane autonomy
- All containers can be placed at their designated stowage position
- All containers can be loaded and unloaded independently by crane
- Direct access from the cargo hold to the working zone
- Storage of the daughter craft in a hangar
- Safe boarding to the daughter craft
- Safe launching and recovering of the daughter craft also during the SOV is moving
- Flexible arrangement for different kinds of daughter crafts
Please contact the company via the enquiries form for more information.