Seatower’s game-changing wind turbine foundations could reduce the cost of offshore wind farming

The Seatower Cranefree turbine platform could be such a significant step forward

Offshore wind farming combines the clean, green, environmentally neutral benefits of land-based wind turbines, while being a lot less visually intrusive … and restricting the usual NIMBY opposition to crustaceans and invertebrates. It’s currently a lot more expensive to install turbines out at sea, though, and that’s restricting the sector’s development. Which is why the Seatower Cranefree turbine platform could be such a significant step forward. Cheaper and easier to install, and requiring less gargantuan and specialized equipment than standard monopile foundations, the Seatower base could help offshore wind farms reach profitability a lot quicker.

Wind farms are one of the cheapest, greenest and most reliable forms of energy generation. One modern turbine can now power more than a thousand homes, and in many areas they’re becoming a significant part of the energy mix.

Offshore wind turbines are even better in a performance sense, and they’re a lot further out of the way, so fragile petals like conservative Australian Treasurer Joe Hockey don’t have to endure the “utterly offensive” sight of clean energy turbines on their way to work in the morning. Strange how conservative politicians seem to find open-cut coal mines far less offensive.

Still, up to this point, offshore turbines have been much, much more expensive to install. That’s because there’s a lot of challenges to overcome when you’re trying to drive a massive monopile foundation into the sea bed.

For starters, the monopiles are huge, they weigh up to 650 tons each, and they require large, expensive ships to transport them. Ships that can drop legs down to the sea floor and elevate themselves above the waves to provide a stable platform that a giant crane can operate from. Very specialized, very rare and very expensive gear that works in a fairly narrow range of weather conditions.

Norway’s Seatower foundations offer a much cheaper installation process that works roughly like this: firstly, the bases are mass-produced and assembled on land. Next, the hollow bases are lowered into the water, where they float in a stable fashion.

From there, they can be towed to the install site by a fairly small boat, at which point two more boats string a line to the base to position it precisely above its resting place.

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