THE ELISA TECHNOLOGY
The Elisa Technology provides a disruptive high-capacity and cost-reducing integrated substructure system for deep offshore wind energy.
The technology is exceptionally fitted to meet the technical and logistical challenges of the sector as it moves into deeper locations with larger turbines, while allowing for drastic cost reduction.
The two main distinctive features of the system are:
- A self-erecting telescopic tower, which brings down the center of gravity during the temporary installation stages, enabling ground breaking possibilities in the installation process and providing full independence of costly and scarce offshore heavy-lift vessels which have become a bottleneck for the sector both in terms of capacity and availability.
- An economic foundation base which, thanks to lowering of the center of gravity enabled by the telescopic tower, can temporarily act as a self-stable floating barge over which the complete system can be pre-assembled in-shore at low drafts and low heights and effectively towed to the site, where it is ballasted to rest on the seabed.
A major part of the substructure shall use precast concrete, allowing for high production rates, as well as high industrialization and quality levels through prefabrication. this is supported by the extensive and virtually exclusive experience obtained by Esteyco in the design, certification, production and erection engineering of nearly 500 precast concrete wind towers at an industrial scale.
The Technology, conceived and patented by Esteyco, uses a self-transporting substructure and a self-lifting precast. Its configuration allows the solution to be transported in a single operation and to self-lift, therefore only using conventional means, and to be de-installed and re-installed for major corrective actions.
The development of the innovative solution, framed in the Telwind Project, is being also supported by the European Commission, through the H2020-LCE-02-2015 call. Ale Heavylift, DSI, Mecal, Cobra Instalaciones y Servicios, Cedex, UC-IHC and Technische Universität München joined Esteyco to form the consortium.
