Norwegian offshore crane specialist Red Rock has recently received an order to deliver a telescopic offshore crane for an under-construction service operation vessel (SOV) being built for the Taiwanese offshore wind market.
The order for the crane came from Vard Vung Tau in Vietnam which is building the Service Operation Vessel (SOV) destined to support Ørsted's operations at the Greater Changhua offshore wind farms in Taiwan.
The Red Rock crane is of an offshore telescopic knuckle boom type with a safe working load of 2 tonnes with a maximum of 12-meter radius providing ship to ship operations over the stern of the vessel to smaller service crafts/boats. Red Rock said the order marked its 100th successful crane delivery.
The SOV will be owned by Ta San Shang - a JV between MOL and TTM - and will be chartered by Ørsted on a 15-year term.
The SOV is of VARD 4 19 design, developed by Vard Design. The vessel is scheduled for delivery in the first half of 2022.
Ørsted will use the Port of Taichung as the vessels base port, where Ørsted's future O&M facilities will be located, due to its proximity to the sites, water depths for accommodating deep-draft vessels, and navigational access.
The SOV will be utilized to provide O&M services for the Greater Changhua offshore wind farms, which will be located 35 to 60 kilometers off the Changhua coastline.
It will house up to 60 technicians plus the crew and will only need to return to shore once a month. The smaller crew transfer vessels (CTVs), also used to facilitate O&M activities, can only carry a maximum of 24 people and have to return to shore on a daily basis.
Further, the SOV will be equipped with a motion-compensated gangway to enable technicians to 'walk to work'. The SOV will also use a dynamic positioning system to automatically maintain its position and a 3D motion-compensated crane to mitigate wind induced motions on the loads to further ensure that technicians can carry out maintenance in a safe environment.
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