Engineering news
Corus Redcar site to re-employ workers to build wind turbine monopiles
Firm continues negotiations on mothballed Teesside Cast Products site
Corus has unveiled plans to develop an offshore wind farm business and create 220 jobs on the site of a mothballed plant in Teesside.
The European division of Indian steelmaker Tata wants to build a £31.5 million factory to produce monopiles - steel structures which fix offshore wind turbines to the seabed. The new plant will be developed within Corus' 3,000 acre site in Redcar - home of the mothballed Teesside Cast Products site.
More than 1,600 jobs were lost when the steel plant was shut down in February. If Corus successfully secures enough orders for the proposed new site, it would create 220 vacancies, which the company said would be open to former employees of Teesside Cast Products.
Chris Elliot, Corus' director of product marketing, said: "The government has approved ambitious plans to build thousands of wind turbines at sea over the next 10 years. In the UK alone, we estimate that about six million tonnes of steel will be needed over the next 10 years to make the foundations and tower structures for offshore wind turbines.
"We are positioning ourselves to take full benefit of these opportunities."
The intention is to redeploy and re-equip redundant buildings on the Teesside site for monopile production and shipment of the structures, which can weigh as much as 650 tonnes.
Jon Bolton, long products director at Corus, said: “Our engineers will be carrying out work in Teesside over the coming weeks to give us a head start on creating a new facility.”
The firm said the proposed developments would not affect continuing negotiations surrounding the mothballed Teesside facility, and the company's search for a potential buyer. Corus was reportedly losing £100 million a month in mid-2009, but after a major restructuring is now making a profit.
Supporting wind turbines
Support structures for offshore wind turbines have to cope with combined wind and hydrodynamic loading and complex dynamic behaviour from the wind turbine. The integrated effect of the wind and wave loads and the wind turbine control system have to be captured, because the total loading is likely to be significantly less than the sum of the constituent loads. This is because the loads are not coincident, and because the aerodynamic damping provided by the rotor significantly damps the motions due to wave loading.
Monopiles are the most common kind of support structure for offshore wind turbines so far. Concrete gravity base structures have also been used. As turbines get larger and are placed in deeper waters, experts expect jacket structures to become more commonplace.
