Triton Anchor
The Triton Anchor System:
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Cost savings by lowering manufacturing (~40% reduction) and installation costs (~25% reduction)
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Can be applied to any offshore wind platform or mooring configuration making it a flexible solution for the growing market
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Minimizes acoustic impact on the environment and sea life
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Can be easily removed for decommissioning planning
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Is scalable and applicable to many types of subsea foundations beyond offshore wind, such as other renewable energy systems
Triton’s anchoring system’s advancements and innovations:
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1. A cost-effective, high-uplift capacity anchoring solution that gives marine energy developers the ability to utilize taut, tension leg, and shared anchoring systems instead of large footprint catenary configurations that interfere with fishing and transportation industries and can disturb much of the seafloor.
2. A modular fabrication system to strengthen the local supply chain and labor industries with the ability to manufacture and assemble the anchors within the rate payer’s regions.
3. An ecologically responsible, virtually silent installation methodology to enable more cost-effective installation practices with less interference with local and migrating marine life.
4. An efficient and proven anchor design based on site-specific soil data to optimize the use of material and configuration to best suite local supply chain parameters.
5. An optimized multi-component system design approach that allows for a reduced anchor weight to efficiently provide vertical and horizontal geotechnical capacity in single or multi-directional loading cases (shared anchors).
Our Goals
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Ecologically
Mindful Design
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Reduced
Noise Pollution
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Minimal
Mooring Footprint
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Lower Cost per KW
Permitting and Logistics Advantages
1. Local Manufacturing and Logistics.
Triton Anchor offers great advantages because of the easily manufactured and shipped components of the anchor. Helical anchors are currently mass produced by several companies across the world today and within the domestic supply chain. Templates and assemblies can be produced close to ports providing additional jobs in the local economy. With the ability to easily ship and manufacture components, the logistics and time frames are shorter for Triton Anchor as compared to other anchor alternatives.
2. Understanding Capacities.
With helical anchors, embedment depth is known, and anchor capacity can be estimated by recording the installation torque. If desired, in-situ capacity can be defined precisely by pulling out a single extra pile from the group. With traditional anchors, if they are tested, or proof-loaded, and fail they must be reinstalled. Both factors provide additional certainty as to the capacity of the anchor and could reduce requirements for costly site-specific core samples. Additionally, helical anchors do not need to be proof tested after installation.
3. Precision Placement.
Helical anchors can be placed accurately in surveyed locations on the seabed, unlike drag embedment designs. The subsea tool will utilize onboard thrusters to orientate the system into the desired placement location. This will ensure each anchor is placed in the design location regardless of water depth and surface conditions.
4. Vertical and Cyclic Loading.
Wave energy devices use the anchoring system to react against to harness the wave power, providing high vertical and cyclic loading cases, both being advantages of helical anchors.
5. Bottom Type Versatility.
Helical anchors can be used in a variety of bottom conditions. They offer advantages in cohesionless soils, such as sands, where suction piles and driven piles are difficult to install and are ineffective. The anchor design can be modified from site to site or even within the single site location from one side of the field, or even mooring pattern, to the other. Anchor embedment length can easily be changed to save costs over an entire field of floating platforms.
Modular anchor design for all platforms
With a flexible design layout that can be scaled to fit different floating units, the Triton Anchor is comprised of helical piles, a skirt or caisson, and a template.
The Triton Anchor can be sized to any wind platform design (spar, semi-submersible, tension leg, buoy, MRE) and any mooring configuration (catenary, semi-taut, taut), as well as shared anchor systems. Unique for the Triton Anchor is the ability to integrate any mooring connecter.
Technology Background
Helical piles have several benefits that make them valuable to offshore anchoring. They have an excellent holding force to weight ratios in granular soils (i.e., sands), can be placed precisely on the seafloor (in contrast to a drag embedment anchor, for example), and do not require pile driving and its associated noise impact. Helical anchors’ holding force benefits are due to the technology’s ability to provide load resistance in bearing rather than friction, making them efficient and more reliable in cyclic loading (Jardine & Standing, 2012). Helical piles are used today extensively for offshore boat moorings, piers, and securing pipelines. Mass produced; low-weight helical piles can be used in quantity to replace single massive custom-built anchors for the MRE industry. Helical piles have not been previously considered for use at depth because the installation torque required is not available subsea for a reasonable cost. Triton has solved this problem by using a group of smaller helical piles installed at quantity with a custom robotic system.
The Need for Anchor Innovation
The Department of Energy (DOE) and Triton Systems determined that the current floating wind sector is contending with antiquated mooring and anchoring options that are mature, but not realistic for large scale commercial wind farms.
Drag anchors on catenary style moorings are a default option that work on demonstrator units but entail an unrealistic vast spiderweb of overlapping mooring chain in a full farm. This leads to complex field infrastructure with high-risk installation and operational entanglement adding up to permitting and local community approval obstacles. Additionally, local fishing and marine organism farming industries are not able to operate in the same field due to mooring lines spanning across the water column and the seafloor.
Driven pile anchors produce extreme underwater noise levels that result in burdening marine mammal monitoring requirements and expensive noise mitigation equipment, and as well as costly schedule constraints that are unrealistic for a large farm development.
Suction Piles, although preferred to drag and driven pile anchors due to accurate and near silent installation, are limited to mostly clay-based soils due to capacity limitations in sand. Large suction pile anchors are impressive feats but also require large costly quantities of steel and expensive logistics to move anchors from production facilities to wind farm locations, further increasing their high costs and reducing their viability as a solution for the future of offshore wind.
The Triton Anchor is a low cost, silently installed, modular anchoring system that works for catenary, shared, taut, and TLP moorings.
TRITON ANCHOR MARKETS
Floating Offshore Wind
Alternative Offshore Energy
