Blue H - Concept

Blue H Offshore Floating Foundation
Blue H commenced its activities in the offshore wind market by adapting the concept of submerged TLPs, originally developed by the oil industry for some of its off-shore rigs, and designed a platform large and stable enough to support a tower and a wind turbine in all foreseeable weather conditions. Additionally, other important design considerations were the cost of construction, installation and maintenance, with an emphasis on these expenses being kept at economical levels.

Development
More than 5 years of specialist technological development and ‘know-how’ has gone into all aspects of Blue H’s development of its modified TLP, including construction, installation and decommissioning phases of its first prototype. The end result of this is Blue H’s patented Submerged Deepwater Platform (“SDP”); a functional design technology, which critically provides an innovative and cost-effective solution for the installation of offshore wind energy turbines in deep waters. Indeed a major part of the overall development process was ensuring that the SDP could be relatively simply assembled onshore and then towed out far offshore, and positioned in deep waters (60 meters or more in depth).

SDP System overview
Each SDP consists of a hollow body, which provides the buoyancy, which is held “semi-submerged” under water by chains or tethers which connect the buoyant body to a counterweight which lies on the sea bottom. With the buoyant body so held semi-submerged in the water, the necessary uplifting force is created, which keeps the chains constantly tensioned.

With the goal of ultimately providing power to the grid at prices competitive with all other forms of power, Blue H intends to build its offshore wind farms with wind turbines of the highest power rating to increase the economic feasibility of these projects. The cost of conventional shallow water offshore wind turbine foundations increases significantly with water depth. In comparison, the cost of Blue H’s SDP depends on its adaption to the requested or suitable 3rd party turbine and whether it can safely support such a turbine structure, to be stable in high winds.