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| NOF ENERGY :: News :: News from NOF Energy members |
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World leading subsea companies use Narec facilities to carryout major prototype and acceptance testing
04 February, 2010
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| As the extraction of hydrocarbons moves into deeper more demanding waters subsea technology faces greater challenges and requires a significant amount of development. |
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 Narec’s core business is focused on providing R&D, consultancy, test and demonstration services for low carbon and renewable energy technologies, utilising wind, wave, tidal, solar PV and thermal power. However, due to the natural crossover in the skills and development environments required for all technologies going offshore, Narec has developed a capability and proven track record of working with the subsea industry, by adapting our dry docks and dockside site facilities.
Recent high profile projects have included subsea testing, demonstration and factory acceptance trials for christmas trees, ROVs, tether management systems, inspection and robots, sonar devices and pipe integrity testing.
 The North East of England is home to a large subsea community and our team of engineers and site support personnel can design a bespoke service for the testing of state-of-the-art equipment in a controlled dockside environment. Our facilities which include a wave tank, a tidal test facility, still water dock and simulated seabed have enabled Narec to play an instrumental role in testing SMD’s scale model prototype of RT-1 for CTC Marine, and submerged testing of SMD’s first ever Fallpipe ROV for Belgian dredging company Jan de Nul.
RT-1 is the world’s largest most powerful subsea rock trenching vehicle for the burial of pipelines and is currently in Singapore awaiting deployment to Western Australia. The prototype was tested at Narec’s facilities in Blyth, Northumberland using our simulated seabed to recreate seabed conditions off the coast of Western Australia ahead of deployment. This enabled the subsea engineering company SMD to prove the concept of the novel 3-cutter arrangement to excavate a 2 metre trench through up to 40MPa compressive strength rock beneath the pipe cutters.
SMD’s Fallpipe ROV designed to carry out a number of offshore rockdumping operations equipped with state-of-the-art survey equipment such as subsurface positioning, sonar sensors, cameras and monitoring equipment was tested in Narec’s wet dock and is currently in Spain undergoing vessel instalment.
Paul Arthur, Project Manager, SMD said: “Narec play a fundamental role in allowing us to carryout R&D prototype and acceptance testing. They provide a complete solution testing environment which is cost effective and delivered within a specialist, secure and controlled environment.”
A key marine renewable project highlight from 2009 was the successful construction and installation of the power take-off (PTO) system for Aquamarine Power’s Oyster®, a hydro-electric wave power converter installed in Orkney. A full system trial of the unit was completed in the summer of 2009 at Narec’s dry dock facility using a 60-tonne rig to mimic the movement of the Oyster® ‘flap’. It is now moving back and forth in the ocean waves and pumping high pressure water to its onshore hydro-electric turbine.
In addition to our subsea successes, the past 12 months have been very exciting times for Narec. We have expanded rapidly and in July 2009, the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) granted £10M of funding for Project Nautilus – a rotary test rig to be built in Blyth (available from March 2011) – with supporting infrastructure, software modelling capability and technical expertise to satisfy the growing demand from industry for specialist marine renewables drive train development.
 A new £15 million facility for testing offshore turbine blades of up to 100m in length is to be built in the North East of England. The new advanced facility will provide an independent and confidential environment to accelerate the development of new blade designs before they are taken offshore. The new world class facility is jointly funded by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and Department for Energy and Climate Change (£11.5m) and Regional Development Agency One North East (£3.5m).
Further proposals for the development of the Narec wind campus over the next five years to support the deployment of Round 3 farms, expected from 2014 could include a drive train development facility for turbines of up to 12MW and full-scale demonstration capability.
A great degree of synergy between low carbon technologies and the subsea community already exists, these planned developments will help to strengthen this relationship as well as providing excellent opportunities for traditional industries and the wider supply chain to make the transition into new and renewable energy technologies.
Narec are keen to develop its subsea capabilities and facilities and build relationships with the wider subsea community, if you are interested in knowing more about how Narec can help please contact Lisa Dodds, Business Development Manager – Wind and Marine or visit stand number A6 at Subsea 2010, 10th-11th February.
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