June 2022. The ICE 500NFU has just completed the first installation of an UMACK anchor in the waters off the coast of Portugal.

The UMACK foundation anchor was chosen by CorPower, manufacturer of the C4 Wave Energy Converter, as this type of anchor outperforms gravity anchors and conventional monopiles in terms of holding capacity, cost, and carbon footprint. This type of foundation is installed with a high-speed and low noise vibro-driving method like offered by the ICE 500NF vibratory hammer, ensuring low impact to marine life. An UMACK anchor can be installed into sand or mixed sand/clay sediment seabed in less than 10 minutes.

The innovative UMACK technology represents a geotechnical breakthrough allowing 4-5 times higher vertical load capacity compared to a standard monopile of the same size. The UMACK anchor is designed to provide more than 15MN of vertical holding capacity and to resist one hundred million load cycles. The UMACK anchor is an efficient, low-cost anchoring for offshore structures across sectors such as wave & tidal energy, floating wind, and aquaculture.  

CorPower’s Wave Energy Converters are point absorber type, with a heaving buoy on the surface absorbing energy from ocean waves for harvesting electricity from ocean waves. The buoy is connected to the seabed using a tensioned mooring system. Energy stored in waves are converted into electricity through the rise and fall as well as the back-and-forth motion of waves. The composite buoy, interacting with this wave motion, drives a Power Take Off inside the buoy that converts the mechanical energy into electricity.

CorPacks are used as 300kW building blocks that are laid out side-by-side to form larger wave farms that can total hundreds of megawatts to gigawatt scale. The electricity generated by each CorPack is exported through a collection hub. CorPacks can be used as either stand-alone wave farms or hybrid wave-wind combination farms sharing the electrical export infrastructure and delivering a very consistent combined power profile. Hybrid wave-wind farms have the potential to deliver a more valuable power profile that enables higher average revenues, while unlocking cost reduction from shared electrical infrastructure, operations and maintenance teams and vessels as well as combined project development.

The 1400mm diameter, 22m long anchor pile and was fitted with a 3500mm wide bulb close to the foot of the pile that increases the lateral bearing capacity of the pile. The anchor was driven by ICE’s largest single hammer 20 meters into the seabed, fully submerging the vibro in the process. The top of the anchor is specifically designed so that the hammer’s 4 clamps transfer the maximum eccentric force straight down the pile, offering an optimal amplitude to liquefy the soil layers and let the pile penetrate the seabed aided by the pile and hammer’s self-weight. The 500NF was fitted with an up-ending arm. The water depth was 38 meters. The soil conditions were mixed sand/clay sediment seabed and the driving time approximately 10 minutes.

This project was an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the capability of the 500NF in a project with many other technological breakthroughs! If you would like to learn what efficiencies this hammer can bring to your project, please get in touch with our experts today!

References and further information:

https://www.umack.eu/news/anchor-deployment/

https://corpowerocean.com/

What is the potential of wave energy in China?

The best exploitable areas for generating energy from waves are found in the South China Sea, east of the Taiwan Island, the East China Sea, and the Ryukyu Islands waters, but in the Bohai Sea and the Yellow Sea are relatively low, especially in the coastal sides as low as 10%. The Bohai Sea, the northern part of the Yellow sea, the Northern Bay, and the Gulf of Thailand are all in the poor resource areas. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0144598719878777