Rovco has completed survey work for the planned Cenos floating offshore wind farm in the Central North Sea.
Located 124 miles off the cost of North East Scotland, the 1.4 GW project is set to be one of the world’s largest floating offshore wind farms when completed in 2028.
Developing partners Flotation Energy and Vårgrønn contracted Rovco to conduct a geo-environmental survey at the site covering more than 200 square miles.
Rovco director of marine site characterisation Craig Davis said the company completed the work using its Glomar Supporter survey vessel.
“The deployment of the Supporter, which carries a full suite of survey tools, equipment, and technology, along with a highly experienced specialist team, was instrumental in ensuring that the fast-track delivery schedule for Cenos remained on schedule,” Mr Davis said.
“This milestone reinforces the capabilities of our new business unit, designed to provide a ‘one-stop-shop’ approach to site characterisation projects.
“We’re not just meeting expectations; we’re redefining the standard for completing surveys as swiftly, efficiently, and cost-effectively as possible.”
Rovco completes Cenos site survey
The work scope for the project included acquiring geophysical and sea floor information to provide detailed data for the environmental impact assessment and the front-end engineering and design (FEED) study.
Rovco said the geophysical element of the work involved acquiring multi-beam echo sounder, side scan sonar, magnetometer, sub-bottom profile and multi-channel seismic data.
When complete, the Cenos wind farm will provide renewable electricity to oil and gas platforms to reduce associated carbon emissions from the assets.
In addition, Cenos will also provide renewable electricity to the UK grid.
Cenos is estimated to save more than 2 million tonnes of CO2 a year, supporting Scotland towards its 2045 net zero targets.
Cenos part of INTOG leasing round
Earlier this month, the Flotation Energy and Vårgrønn joint venture signed an exclusivity agreement with Crown Estate Scotland for the area.
The agreement follows an earlier exclusivity award as part of Crown Estate Scotland’s Innovation and Targeted Oil & Gas (INTOG) offshore leasing round, which also includes the 560MW Green Volt project.
Cenos project manager Scott McLaughlan said: “Working collaboratively with our supply chain partners is at the heart of our ethos and building strong relationships enables us to advance the Cenos and Green Volt INTOG projects with continued agility and pace.
“Rovco’s approach to managing and executing the fast-track survey brief for Cenos, effectively and within the challenging timeframes, has provided us with the continuity and depth of data we require to advance both our consent and our engineering plans.”
Rovco launched its marine site characterisation business at the beginning of 2023, aiming to address what it says is a critical industry shortage of companies able to support early stage development of offshore wind farms.
The business unit is centred on the Glomar Support vessel, on a three year lease deal from Glomar.
The vessel underwent an extensive rebuild and refurbishment in 2021 to permanently equip it with a range of advanced survey sensors.
Bristol-headquartered Rovco opened an Aberdeen office in 2020 as part of a £1 million North Sea expansion.