The work to build an experimental prototype wind farm in Lake Erie has continued and may wind up costing less that original estimates.
A Danish company Universal Foundation has invented wind turbine foundations that could be used to secure turbines to the bottom of Lake Erie in a prototype wind farm aiming to prove lake wind turbines will work. Here two of the company's "mono bucket foundations" are about to be installed in the North Sea off the coast of the United Kingdom.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The Lake Erie Energy Development Corp., or LEEDCo., has a new European partner that may be able to reduce the cost of placing wind turbines in Lake Erie.
Denmark-based Universal Foundation has for more than a decade been testing a wind turbine foundation design that eliminates underwater excavation or the need to drive steel piles deep into a Lake or sea bottom.
The company's foundation system has been getting a lot of attention in Europe because its design saves money and time and is thought to be less environmentally disruptive.
Universal Foundation's "Mono Bucket foundation" is an all-in-one steel structure -- a monopile shaft attached to the bottom of a large-diameter bucket.
The bucket is sunk and placed open-side down on the sea or lake bottom with the pole extending toward the surface of the water.
And when engineers pump out the water trapped in the inverted bucket, the structure sinks itself into the sea or lake bottom, said David Karpinski, a LEEDCo engineer.
The all-steel mono bucket foundation could be built here, said Lorry Wagner, president of LEEDCo, and for significantly less money than driving steel piles into the lake bottom, as the company initially proposed.
"It is lighter than our original concept, requires significantly less time on the water during construction, and can be fabricated locally," Wagner said.
LEEDCo, or its predecessor, has been exploring how to place up to six wind turbines in Lake Erie since 2005.
The nonprofit company failed to win a $46.7 million U.S. Department of Energy grant a year ago and is currently operating with a $3 million DOE research grand and additional funding from the Cleveland Foundation.
LEEDCo is also continuing to talk to European and U.S. private investors, and if successful, could test a prototype of this new, less expensive foundation by the summer of 2018.
"Based on work done in Europe looking at the Mono Bucket foundation, the savings in fabrication costs would be between 10 percent-15 percent and the savings in installation costs would be on the order of 30 percent-50 percent," said Karpinski. "As we complete the detailed engineering we will be able to be more specific about our project."
Two years ago, LEEDCo estimated the cost of building six 3-megawatt wind turbines on a site seven miles northwest of downtown at about $127 million.
Most of that money, about $80 million was to come from private European investors. The failure to win the DOE grant forced LEEDCo to look for less expensive technologies.
LEEDCo last year signed a 50-year submerged land lease with the state for the site and plans additional soil testing to determine whether Universal Foundation's bucket design can work on the lake bottom.
Universal Foundation is the latest of several European firms that have been working with LEEDCo and Case Western Reserve University's Civil Engineering Department to design a a system for the lake capable of withstanding winter ice floes.
A Universal Foundation prototype has been supporting a 3 megawatt wind turbine in Denmark since 2002. A second prototype has been supporting a mast holding an anemometer and other meteorological equipment since 2009.
In 2011, Universal Foundation was a finalist in a European competition led by the nine largest European utilities to develop innovations for the off-shore wind industry, said Wagner.
In 2013, the company successfully installed two meteorological masts in the middle of the North Sea, and last year the company completed a series of 29 successful trial installations in various challenging soil conditions off the east coast of England.
Universal's foundation uses a design that was first used in the deep sea oil and gas industry, said Karpinski, to tether floating oil and gas drilling platforms.
The mono-bucket's suction system means LEEDCo would not need to disturb the lake bottom or use expensive pile driving equipment out in the lake. And construction of the foundations would take much less time.
CWRU's Civil Engineering Department has begun discussions with its counterpart at Aalborg University in Denmark, said Karpinski.