Articles and Videos
Insight from Empire’s engineering team. We’ll update the page regularly and we’d be happy to talk if you’d like to know more about a given topic.
Chinese Steels in Offshore Wind, how do we ensure they meet the European Standards?
By Aaron Zigeng Du. Europe and China will become two largest offshore wind markets in the next decade Despite this trend, it can feel like there is almost no overlap of supply chains between the two markets. To the casual observer over the past decade, China offshore...
Webinar on demand: Developers vs Designers
By Karl Davis. This October we ran the fourth of our 'Tech sessions' webinars. For this session we aimed to generate some real debate under the title of Developers vs Designers. We decided to get both a developer and a designer around the table for some healthy...
The frontier between fixed and floating foundations in offshore wind
By Eric Paya and Aaron Zigeng Du. The frontier between fixed and floating foundations In the ScotWind Leasing Round, around 50% of the Draft Plan Option (DPO) areas are located in “deep water zones”, which have water depths greater than 50 metres. Considering the...
Empire Engineering supports the Big Blue Ocean Cleanup
By Karl Davis. Today we are proud to announce our support of Big Blue Ocean Cleanup and their Ocean Protection Project. At Empire Engineering we believe in the importance of the protection of the world's oceans and the increasingly fragile marine environment. Big Blue...
Webinar on demand: Designing the Monopile without a transition piece: why, how and when?
By Karl Davis. On the last Friday in August, we put on the third 'Tech Session' in our popular series. For this month, we looked at fixed foundations and specifically we discussed the topic of TP-less design. Andrew Hodgson on the Empire Engineering team was joined by...
Let’s talk risk: what if an offshore wind turbine fell over?
By Nick Howard. Cast your mind back a few years Had you happened to be standing outside a pub opposite Bristol Train Station on a dreary February afternoon in 2017, gently nursing a warm Fosters, you may well have seen me, peering out of a taxi window, my expression...
Webinar on demand: How deep can the Monopile go?
By Karl Davis. On Friday 31 July we ran the second in our series of Tech sessions under our Foundation Ex brand. This time we turned our attention the humble Monopile and tackled the thorny question of just how deep can the Monopile go. I was joined by my colleague,...
Foundation Ex: tech sessions webinar 31 July
Later this week, we will be running the second in our series of tech sessions webinars. Morten Tobias Lind, Technical Director at COWI, will join as expert guest speaker. The live webinar will look back at the journey from traditional foundations right up to the current situation and how things look for the future.
Foundation Ex postponed to 2021
By Karl Davis. In October 2019, the Empire team welcomed over a 100 people to Bristol for our first ever Foundation Ex conference. A one day (and two evening) discussion and celebration of all things technical in offshore wind. Last week as a team we took the...
Webinar on demand: An introduction to floating offshore wind.
By Aaron Zigeng Du and Eric Paya. On Friday 26 June, we ran our first ever live broadcast. The hot topic for the discussion was offshore wind foundations. Two of our expert team members, Aaron Zigeng Du and Eric Paya took time out from their busy schedules to deliver...
Foundation Design Certification: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
By Karl Davis. The word Certified has lots of positive connotations, it conjures feelings of confidence, trust and strength. Independent Certification of a design by the likes of DNV-GL, Lloyds Register, Bureau Veritas, TUV, ABS or ClassNK and similarly...
Floating Offshore Wind is Here to Stay
By Aaron Zigeng Du and Eric Paya. Floating Wind Goes Mainstream Floating offshore wind (FOW), considered as a niche technology by some, is no longer confined to R&D. It has gradually reached a high ‘technology readiness level’, making it a natural complement to...
Why is Structural Integrity Management important for Floating Offshore Wind?
By Aaron Zigeng Du. Floating offshore wind Floating offshore wind is a leading technology in the renewable energy sector. Since the world’s first commercial floating offshore wind farm Hywind Scotland with a capacity of 30 MW was commissioned in October 2017,...
ENGINEERING WAR STORIES Diversity in offshore wind. Bringing together a diverse team and working together for offshore wind project success
By Aaron Zigeng Du. As one of the fastest growing renewable power sources, offshore wind industry embraces cutting-edge technologies, such as Big Data, Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain, to improve the efficiency of power...
Looking forward to Foundation Ex 2020
By Karl Davis. Foundation Ex was the very first offshore engineering conference in Bristol. It was founded after attending countless events where I always felt that something was missing – I never felt inspired to come back with the ideas and inspiration.I wanted to solve this problem.
Empire Engineering London office is open for business
We are delighted to announce the launch of our London Office at our new Blackfriars location, alongside the addition of our new Head of London Office, Aaron Zigeng Du. Aaron Zigeng Du, Head of London office "I'm looking forward to working with Empire's London based...
All the sessions from Foundation Ex
Our speakers from Foundation Ex 2019 have kindly allowed us to share the slides from their sessions. Here they are for you to download.
Foundation Ex offshore engineering conference: Event report
The dust has now settled after the inaugural Foundation Ex conference. Myself and all at Empire Engineering would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who was involved.
Foundation Ex: why it’s not just another conference…
Foundation Ex is an event for technical teams, by a technical team. Taking place on 1st October in Bristol, Foundation Ex will bring together experts from across the world in a series of dynamic keynote talks and workshops, sharing knowledge on cutting edge technical innovation in offshore wind turbine foundations.
ENGINEERING WAR STORIES Turning an offshore structural failure into a repair success
Cracks in Primary Structure Offshore can be stress inducing… This is the story of how we helped our Client from first identifying the failure, through the process of Root Cause Analysis, to enacting a safe repair.
