Subsea Company of the Year 2011
Theone Wilson reports on a fast-growing company that’s got
ambition for the renewables industry
SMD is one of the world’s leading subsea engineering companies. The group designs and manufactures work class ROVs, trenching systems, subsea mining machines and tidal generation devices, and with over 30 years’ experience it has recently been awarded ‘Subsea Company of the Year 2011’ by Subsea UK. The award was presented at a ceremony in Aberdeen and aims to recognise excellence in business achievement. More than 700 people from across the subsea sector attended and Lord Digby-Jones made a keynote speech, noting that manufacturing is “alive and well” in the UK, and that the UK subsea sector is a “global champion” for the country.
The award follows a successful year for SMD, which included winning a 20-unit ROV ‘superbid’ order from Subsea 7, and manufacturing the world’s largest free stream tidal turbine for Atlantis Resources Corporation.
The main office and manufacturing facilities are in Newcastle, but the group also runs operations in the USA and Singapore and can boast a worldwide customer base, operating in oil and gas, telecoms, mining, salvage, renewables and the defence and scientific markets.
Clive Adshead, Renewables Business Stream Manager, states that SMD’s aims and ambitions are “to use the company’s experience in all aspects of the ‘life’ of a marine renewable device - design, development, manufacture, installation, maintenance and de-commissioning.”
This ambition is demonstrated in the company’s work to date. SMD has drawn on its experience to design and test its own 1/10th scale model of a deepwater, moored tidal stream generating device concept, known as TidEL, at the New and Renewable Energy Centre (NaREC) in Blyth.
The full-scale prototype will consist of a pair of contra-rotating 500kW turbine/generators that are mounted together by a cross beam. The complete assembly is buoyant and secured to the seabed. The novel mooring system allows the turbines to align themselves ‘downstream’ of the prevailing tidal flow without requiring any external intervention, providing a reliable way of tracking the alternating tidal flow cycle.
Each of the turbine ‘power trains’ are driven by fixed pitch blades and are housed within a pod with high integrity seals, a planetary gearbox and an AC electrical generator. The unit is expected to weigh 100 tonnes and the blades will rotate at 0-20 RPM.
These 1MW units are designed to be mounted in an offshore tidal environment with a peak velocity of nine knots (or more) in a water depth of greater than 30m with no visual impact on the environment. The TidEL project is still under development, and SMD is looking to work with other developers of similar projects to get it into the marketplace.
The main challenges that affect SMD and the wave and tidal industry as a whole are supply chain issues - in particular, the installation of multiple units in short tidal and weather windows. “SMD is actively looking to work with installation companies and device developers to address these challenges and provide cost-effective solutions,” says Adshead.
In fact, collaboration in any area is key to growing the business. In 2010, SMD entered into a collaboration agreement with Atlantis Resources Corporation (ARC), a leading developer of tidal energy. This was to achieve the technology integration and manufacture of what is claimed to be the world’s largest ‘free stream’ tidal turbine. After six months of intense fabrication, assembly and commissioning work at the SMD facilities in Wallsend, Newcastle, the turbine nacelle was delivered to Invergordon for final assembly of the blades and gravity base, and the control cabs were delivered directly to the EMEC test site in Orkney. The AK1000 tidal energy turbine was deployed at the EMEC test site in Orkney.
SMD has also worked with Pelamis Wave Power (PWP). After initial discussions in late 2009, SMD was contracted to work with PWP to develop the conceptual design of a remotely operated diesel/hydraulic installation winch unit. Using subcontractors to supply the major components, SMD completed the assembly, testing and commissioning of the unit at the Wallsend facilities. The winch has been successfully used in the installation of the Pelamis wave energy device at EMEC.
Once a design has been developed, the installation and connection to the electrical grid system needs to be efficient. Adshead explains: “Installation has to be made simple, robust and survivable to enable farms of units to be installed and maintained. I believe that construction costs will reduce naturally through ‘learning rates’ once prototypes have been proven and batches of commercial units are manufactured”. He adds that as the requirement for more devices to be installed expands, the demands on the supply chain for specialist installation vessels and cable laying/burial equipment will increase.
Burial of cables under the seabed for protection and to prevent damage from fishing and shipping activity is paramount and SMD has produced a large range of cable burial machines capable of operating in these harsh environments. Over the last few years, SMD has already achieved considerable success in evolving proven cable burial technology for the offshore wind turbines and provided the novel seabed tractor for MPI and also the cable plough for Oceanteam. Many cable trenchers built by SMD for the oil and gas industry are also being upgraded to meet the demands of the offshore wind industry.
The difficulties in operating in a harsh marine environment, where weather and tidal ‘windows’ are limited for installation activities, are not to be underestimated. Reducing installation times and avoiding the need for diving activities is key to successful and economical operations.
SMD is applying its experience to develop innovative remotely operated installation technologies to help deploy devices, through building wider collaborative agreements with device developers, installation and support contractors.
The group has also recently created a Renewables Business Stream to bring its subsea engineering expertise to bear in offshore wind, wave and tidal markets. The Business Stream's aims and ambitions are "to use the company’s experience in all aspects of the ‘life’ of a marine renewable device - design, development, manufacture, installation, maintenance and de-commissioning."
Looking to the future, Adshead expects the wave and tidal industry to become commercially viable within five to six years. Critical to this will be ensuring that the developing installation aids have matured significantly to reduce installation and electrical connection time.
He believes the key developments in this sector in the next decade will be installation technology, including subsea cable connections. Collaboration between developers and the supply chain will be crucial in this development, and the future of the industry will also depend on learning from the experience of other sectors such as oil and gas and offshore wind.
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