Esteyco Partners with Tecnalia on TELWIND Subsea Cable Solution

Esteyco has team up with the Basque Research and Innovation Center Tecnalia to design the subsea dynamic power cable for the TELWIND project.

The collaboration is putting together Esteyco’s background on the design of offshore concrete platforms and Tecnalia’s experience on the design of umbilical cables for wave and tidal devices and floating wind platforms.

The main objective of this task is to analyze several cable layouts to best suit the motions of the TELWIND platform. The design also includes the definition of cable ancillaries such as buoyancy modules, bend stiffeners and protection against abrasion on the touchdown point.

The definition of the cable arrangement is key to avoid the damage caused by years under the constant motions induced by the floating platform. Abrasion due to the friction with the seabed, tensions and bending in excess, and also the connection with the platform are the typical issues that need to be addressed.

“This collaboration with Tecnalia is bringing us the opportunity to strength our capabilities on the design of subsea cables for floating platforms. Our models performed with Ansys AQWA are aligned with the results obtained by Tecnalia,” explains Joaquin Urbano, Work Package manager.

“Esteyco offshore department is ready to address most of the challenges on the design of floating wind platforms, either by doing our own calculations or specifying and supervising the work carried out by third parties,” explains Bernardino Couñago, TELWIND project manager.

Tecnalia is performing the simulations with the ORCAFLEX software. This tool can design the cable, including specific features to assess not only the cable dynamics but also the ancillaries required to define the cable configuration.

“We are glad to bring our knowledge and experience to this groundbreaking project. After years of researching in the offshore marine energies sector, Tecnalia is on a preferential position to support our industrial partners,“ Germán Pérez, Head of offshore wind in Tecnalia.