Marine Design Project: Kermit

Report, 2015

In order to meet growing energy demands, the world can no longer rely solely on conventional energy sources of the industrialization era. The renewable energy industry is growing fast to compensate for the energy deficit, while keeping the negative impact of this growth on the environment to a minimum. The 2014 Marine Design Project client Blekinge Offshore AB has proposed a 700 windmill farm in the Swedish waters of the Bay of Hanö. As part of this national-scaled project, the design and production of a vessel capable of transferring and installing the gravity foundations as well as the windmills themselves needs to be designed. This report presents a special purpose vessel which uniquely combines principles of heavy cargo lifting by ballast water management, winches and the ability to ground The Vessel during loading of the cargo. The 7983 DWT vessel will shuttle between the coastal assembly site and the wind farm site at a speed of 10 knots and facilitate the lifting, transporting and mounting of the foundations as well as the already assembled windmill towers. The Vessel itself is designed in such a way to have the smallest possible impact on the environment, as The Baltic Sea is among the most tightly controlled regions in the world. The vessel is designed with special human factor considerations in order to cater for the safety and comfort of the crew and the installation technicians, by means of sea keeping and accommodation considerations. Despite the vessels size and the highly advanced operations it will be performing, it only requires a crew size of 8 people. Also equipped with state of the art Dynamic Positioning technology, the vessel insures accuracy of operations while maintaining the shortest possible time schedule, thus minimizing operational costs.