WINDHOIST ENERGY & UTILITIES
WINDS OF CHANGE Wind turbine installations are a breeze for Windhoist, whose Managing Director, Euan Fenelon, highlights some key onshore and offshore projects Writer: Jack Salter Project Manager: Marvin Iseghehi
The wind energy industry is maturing. It’s much more commercially driven now than it has ever been before, and performance expectations are much higher in terms of quality and safety.” Conscious of these heightened expectations, amid the global offshore wind boom, is the Managing Director of Windhoist, Euan Fenelon. A leading wind turbine installation contractor, Windhoist offers heavy cranage, mechanical and electrical services to principal wind turbine suppliers in the market, including Vestas, Siemens Gamesa, Nordex, and more. The Scottish company was established in 2005, after its founders identified the need for a UK-based mechanical and electrical installation turnkey supplier to the emerging wind
Hornsea offshore wind farm construction
industry. Since then, Windhoist has delivered more than 11 gigawatts (GW) of capacity and invested in a number of key competencies, specifically to service the needs of the offshore wind sector. Today, it is part of The
Windlogix Group (Windlogix), where Fenelon is also Chief Operating Officer. “There are three companies within Windlogix (Windhoist, Stowen, and Hexis). Windhoist is the crane and installation side of the group, in which
we do onshore and offshore wind farm installations,” he explains. Windlogix’s modular concept allows the company to serve customers globally, whilst maintaining the same high levels of quality, HSE (health, safety and environment), and
schedule adherence. Launched in March, the integration of the three businesses will deliver a “one stop shop” service delivery ethos to the on and offshore renewable market, meeting expectations from the construction, through operations
to the demobilisation phases of wind farm development. With a wide spectrum of capabilities, the Windlogix model reduces interface risk for customers and adds value through synergies provided within the group. EME Outlook issue 47 | 3
The Future Of Crane Operators
Services: Mobile And Crawler Crane Operators For assembly the wind turbines Assisting Crane Operators For loading and offloading the components Riggers Personnel for helping assembly main cranes as well helping loading and offloading wind turbine parts Truck Drivers Helping with relocation of the cranes on wind park Wind Turbine Technicians Assembly and maintenance the wind turbines Rope Access Technicians / IRATA Service of wind turbines and blades SPMT Operators Relocating heavy weights as bridges, offshore components with specialized equipment
Linnankatu 13a A 10, 20100 Turku T: +358 44 241 6552 E: markku.lehkonen@rentop.fi. Rentop.fi
WINDHOIST ENERGY & UTILITIES
EME OUTLOOK: COULD YOU PROVIDE US WITH SOME INSIGHT INTO YOUR CAREER IN WIND ENERGY? “I joined Scottish Power in 2003 where I worked for 14 years in various roles, including power generation in a coalfired power station, before moving into the renewables industry. “A role came up in safety operations for Iberdrola, where I headed up their offshore safety management programme working on offshore wind farms. “I then moved to Natural Power as Director of Operations and Asset Management for four years, prior to joining Windhoist in 2021.”
COMPREHENSIVE SUPPORT Windhoist has an advanced suite of heavy lift craneage. Operating a comprehensive and diverse fleet of heavy cranes generally specialised for the wind industry, the company provides services including one-off lifts and multi-unit contracts, giving an all-round, complete solution. “We have five main cranes and a number of support cranes in the business that deliver support on and offshore,” outlines Fenelon. “It can take up to 60 truckloads to move a Liebherr LG 1750, which is one of our biggest cranes, from one location to another.” The LG 1750 is a heavy lifting, 6 | EME Outlook issue 47
lattice-tower mobile crane that combines the flexibility of a 750tonne crawler crane with the mobility of a fast-moving truck crane from the same load category. Four extremely rigid, folding arms of generous size make up the star pattern supports, dominating the appearance of the crane’s chassis. “Highly competent staff are needed to drive these cranes because they are pretty complicated things. You can’t just drive them on the road straight away, you need special permits,” Fenelon continues. “We have a core team that leads the installation of wind farms on
and offshore, as well as electrical/ mechanical personnel who deliver support to the sites, from full wind farm project management to supplying just one person to a project.” By utilising its multi-disciplinary in-house teams, Windhoist works with customers to ensure they achieve their targets and gain maximum return on their investment. Likewise, the company also works closely with a number of local suppliers to support its operations. “The good thing is that local people benefit from local supply chains, they benefit from the wind being there, so
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entop was founded in 2018 and has now grown to an international company with over 245 lifting professionals. Our professionals consist of riggers, assist crane operators, truck drivers, wind turbine technicians, rope access technicians, SPMT operators, main crane operators and technicians with IRATA. You can always count on us for all your lifting personnel needs, no matter how big or small. We are dedicated to professionalism, responsibility, and ensuring safety. Whether you need experienced professionals or extensive training, or project planning, management, and supervision – we are here to help! When you need a skilled crane operator, we will provide the perfect operator for the right equipment, the right job, and of course, the right client. Our operators have extensive experience in using various lifting equipment and working at all kinds of sites, both big and small. If you are not sure what kind of equipment or operator you need, it is our job to be sure and help you. Regardless of the extent of your personnel needs, do not hesitate to contact us. Our professional operators are adept at handling a wide variety of equipment, from telehandlers to the largest cranes. We will provide you with a wellprepared and experienced team, no matter the size of the machinery. We operate in metal, forestry, energy, and bio
industries, especially in wind turbine, mining, construction, and other manufacturing industries. We value honesty, openness and solidarity. We pride ourselves on always being honest - to ourselves and to our customers and other affiliates. We openly bring up all the facts that affect the safety as well as the quality and reliability of our services. We truly care for our employees and have various programmes and policies in place to assure our personnel’s overall wellbeing. Our leading thought is that this will result in strong work ethic, great quality of our services, engaged employees and an attractive workplace. Rentop Oy supported Windhoist on Nysater Wind Farm in Sweden. We supported our client from March until the beginning of December. We have been asked to deliver professional main crane operators for assembling the wind turbines, assisting crane operators to support the project by offloading the wind turbines and cranes components. It was a huge role played by our riggers, who helped Windhoist with relocation of the main cranes between the turbines. “The cooperation with Windhoist was extremely professional, friendly and open minded. Together we had one goal which we have achieved.” – Markku Lehkonen, Managing Director of Rentop For more information and how we could assist you please contact us directly at markku.lehkonen@rentop.fi.
E markku.lehkonen@rentop.fi.
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Rentop.fi
WINDHOIST ENERGY & UTILITIES
we’re quite keen to keep progressing with that kind of ethos. “It also gets the local people on side when we’re on site because you become quite the focus when you’re building wind farms. It’s a highly visible process, so you want to get on well with local suppliers as well as local people,” emphasises Fenelon.
PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS Onshore, Windhoist is providing full project management at the Kennoxhead wind farm cluster in South Lanarkshire, Scotland. Boasting an anticipated installed capacity of 174 megawatts (MW), the cluster is being built in two separate phases, with the first expected to enter commercial operation in 2022. “We’re currently delivering projects in Scotland, Finland, Norway, Taiwan and Morocco, and we have done work all over the world. “With 25 years of history in the industry, we have a lot of competent
people here that have been delivering many different types of wind turbines. That in itself can be a challenge because every turbine you see nowadays is brand-new, there are new variations, but we have the experience to take on these new turbines having dealt with change before,” Fenelon tells us. Elsewhere, Windhoist recently completed the pre-assembly of 165 wind turbines at Hornsea Two off the Yorkshire coast, powering well over 1.3 million homes with green electricity. Hornsea Two is located adjacent to Hornsea One, the world’s largest offshore wind farm, where Windhoist also completed pre-assembly operations. “The Hornsea Two pre-assembly was a very interesting process. We had two large jack-up vessels constantly rotating, each collecting sets of four pre-assembled wind turbines ready for installation offshore,” reveals Fenelon.
WINDHOIST SERVICES – AT A GLANCE WIND TURBINE INSTALLATION PACKAGES – Part of the Windlogix group, the real strength of Windhoist is in its ability to provide a turnkey wind turbine installation package. These packages include a full contract lift cranage solution, with all lift studies, method statements, risk assessments and lift plans compiled by a dedicated team of engineers. MECHANICAL/ELECTRICAL SERVICES – Offering specialist mechanical/electrical services to the wind energy industry, Windhoist’s multi-disciplinary technicians are highly skilled and have vast experience working for major wind turbine manufacturers. MAINTENANCE AND SERVICING – Vital to avoid the unnecessary extra costs caused by wind farm downtime, Windhoist can help to reduce expenses by providing a comprehensive maintenance and servicing package. WIND FARM DECOMMISSIONING – With the rapid development of wind turbine technology, there is an increasing demand for the decommissioning and dismantling of old, damaged or compromised wind turbines.
8 | EME Outlook issue 47
Safetech Consulting & Training Ltd In 2013, Safetech Consulting & Training Ltd. became the only approved Training Provider in Republic of Ireland to deliver accredited certification/cards to people working in the UK Construction Energy & Utilities. Established in 2003 by Maria Sweeney, Safetech, an award winning company, has a team of 28 employees and over 80 trainers. This company has grown exponentially and delivers a large suite of training in Ireland and parts of the UK. Accreditations include IOSH, QQI, City & Guilds, CIEH, EUSR, CITB, CPCS, NOCN, PHECC, SQA, Irish Heart Foundation, RTITB, and NPORS. Safetech have centres in Dublin, Galway and Donegal and is currently seeking to set up a base in southern Ireland and in the UK.
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WINDHOIST ENERGY & UTILITIES
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CF WIND INSTALLATION & MAINTENANCE LTD.
At CF Wind, we are passionate about a sustainable world powered by renewable energy We supply the best pre-assembly, service and install engineers who are committed, motivated and have technical expertise to provide our clients with the highest level of service on their wind farm projects around the world. M: 07513935208 | caroline@cfwindinstall.co.uk | www.cfwind.co.uk
EME Outlook issue 47 | 9
WINDHOIST ENERGY & UTILITIES
“ W E U N D E R S TA N D A L L D I F F E R E N T K I N D S OF CHALLENGING ENVIRONMENTS AND H OW TO D E L I V E R I N T H E M ” – E UA N F E N E LO N , M A N AG I N G D I R E C TO R , W I N D H O I ST
COLD WEATHER EXPERIENCE Completed in harsh conditions, Windhoist’s huge experience in cold weather delivery was essential to the successful delivery of Nysater projects in Sweden. Windhoist’s experience has been gained on some of the most difficult sites seen in Europe, with floated roads, steep inclines, and meagre wind abatements providing numerous challenges to the company’s crane operators and technicians. Each site, no matter how difficult, “We effectively had two operations running, each with an LR1750 and LR1300 crane and full installation teams assembling the turbines 24/7, each servicing one of the two jack-up vessels. “It was a considerable process which saw us deal with significant challenges, such as COVID-19, but we never missed the boat, were always on time, and our quality level was very high. Good collaboration with the client meant we managed to get over the line with very little health or safety issues.” Windhoist also carried out wind turbine pre-assembly work for the 588 MW Beatrice offshore wind farm, the second largest in Scotland. Beatrice’s 84 wind turbines became fully operational in June 2019, providing enough wind-powered electricity for up to 450,000 homes. “Beatrice, along with Hornsea One and Two, are the biggest offshore wind farms we’ve done. We also built one of the biggest onshore wind farms in Northern Europe, called Nysater in Sweden, comprising 114 turbines,” Fenelon highlights. 10 | EME Outlook issue 47
is perceived by Windhoist as part of a learning curve, to develop a strategy that maintains high standards of safety, performance and quality in what is a high-risk industry. “One of the projects that we’re delivering is the second-most northerly wind farm in the world, 500 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, and that brings all sorts of challenges that we are very much used to in cold weather delivery,” says Fenelon. “We’ve also delivered in the middle of Morocco, so we understand all different kinds of challenging environments and how to deliver in them. “Obviously crane hire and the process of getting the turbines built is a highly time-dependent process, and you can only build in certain weather conditions, so we are always trying to find ways to help the client accelerate
their programme, get ahead of the game, or react to weather issues when they actually happen,” he continues. Scale is a key driver of the offshore wind boom, as next-generation turbines will stand up to 250 metres tall and must be able to cope with some of the harshest conditions on the planet for more than 25 years. Around 100 GW of offshore wind capacity is expected to be deployed globally by 2030, and whilst Europe has very much been at the forefront of this energy revolution, turbines are now being deployed in even deeper waters further from shore across the world, from Asia to the Americas. Since its establishment, Windhoist has greatly expanded in terms of scope, geographical coverage, and employee numbers. Though the company is now recognised as the largest wind turbine installation contractor in the UK, with an increasing market share in Europe and beyond, further geographical expansion is set to breathe fresh air into the company’s world-leading offshore operations. “We want to diversify our clients
and our geographies, those are the two big things,” Fenelon affirms. “Everybody wants to build wind farms in the summer, especially in the Nordics where the winters are extremely harsh, so we’d like to diversify into winter work. “We’ve got a number of main clients, but we really need to be in a bigger space, and that will come with geographical growth as well, where our clients are also working. It’s an important part of the Windlogix strategy and we’d like to be delivering the same level of quality service in new geographical areas over the coming years. This has already begun with our work in Taiwan but we are ambitious about pushing into new geographies.”
WINDHOIST Tel: +44 (0) 1 294 204 860 enquiries@windhoist.co.uk https://windlogix.com EME Outlook issue 47 | 11
WINDHOIST 4th Floor, 120 Bath Street, Glasgow, G2 2EN Tel: +44 (0) 1 294 204 860 enquiries@windhoist.co.uk https://windlogix.com
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