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.
Today we launch the Empire Engineering Guide to Offshore Wind Foundations
By Karl Davis Today is the launch of The Empire Engineering Guide to Offshore Wind Foundations. This 40-page Guide has been written by the team at Empire Engineering and features specialist collaborators from across our industry. We look at the where, what, how and...
How far can we push D/T ratios?
By Dr Alan Marson As technological advancement and experience increase within the offshore wind industry, it has become both possible and economically viable to push monopiles into deeper and deeper water and use larger and larger turbines. Here at Empire Engineering...
Does the Monopile transition piece have a future in offshore wind?
By Andrew Hodgson The monopile transition piece is being challenged. Eliminating it from the design may bring benefits to offshore windfarms. TP-less monopiles have now been adopted for a number of live projects and are being considered for many more ongoing...
Empire Engineering are speaking at the DIT event: Designing and optimization of foundations
By Karl Davis. On Wednesday 19th of May, Empire's very own Andrew Hodgson and Wei-Ting Hsu are taking part in the Department for International Trade and Scottish Development International virtual conference, 'Designing and optimization of foundations.' Management of...
The Future foundations of offshore wind – thinking ahead
By Karl Davis What does the Future of offshore wind look like? There are a number of market trends and new technologies that I believe will have an impact on the offshore wind industry and foundation design over the next decade. A key question is how are we to adapt...
Conservatism in Geotechnical Design
By Martin Underlin Østergaard During recent years, the boundaries for offshore wind turbine foundations have been pushed further than ever before – deeper waters, bigger turbines and larger foundations, especially monopiles, dominate the latest auctions. To develop...
Why I’m choosing to grow Empire Engineering in the midst of a global pandemic
By Karl Davis. At the start of 2021, it gave me a lot of pleasure to announce another new hire to the growing team here. Opening our Empire Engineering Aalborg office in Denmark was a major milestone in our history. By bringing Martin Underlin Østergaard onboard, we...
Monopile, Jacket or Floater, how do I pick the right option for my offshore wind project?
By Wei-Ting Hsu. Monopile, Jacket or floater? Recently, Empire have provided technical advisory services to a number of offshore wind developers in both The Crown Estate England’s Round 4 and Scotland’s ScotWind Leasing Round tenders. While developing an offshore wind...
Webinar on demand: Big Bolted Connections
By Karl Davis. For our final Tech Session for 2020 we asked the thorny question: Big Bolted Connections, is the industry ready? This was the fifth Tech session in our 2020 series. Our original plan had been to run our Foundation conference for a second year but then,...
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...
