Wedge Connection Joint Industry Project started by large offshore wind consortium

Wedge Connection Joint Industry Project started by a large consortium

The Hague (NL), July 3, 2024

A large industry consortium consisting of bp, TotalEnergies, RWE, Vattenfall, EnBW, Iberdrola, Ocean Winds, Orsted, Equinor, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, Vestas, GE Vernova and C1 Connections have started a Joint Industry Project (JIP) to make the C1 Wedge Connection market ready for commercial scale deployment in Monopile-Transition Piece connections and Tower-Foundation connections.

Goal of the Wedge Connection JIP is to provide the participants with insight into the full production supply chain from flange manufacturing to the welding the flanges to can sections. Knowledge and first hand experience will be obtained on all installation aspects, including installation speed, pile driving and sealing of the C1 Wedge Connection.

With the increasing size of wind turbines, the traditional L-flange design has reached a point where in cases it cannot provide the required capacity anymore. The C1 Wedge Connection™ has been developed to overcome this issue. The Wedge Connection JIP aims at jointly developing the C1 Wedge Connection™ for commercial scale implementation in offshore wind projects for both Monopile-Transition Piece connections as well as for Foundation to Tower connections.

The development of the C1 Wedge Connection™ started early 2017, and the technology was introduced in the first 14 MW wind turbine in 2021. The connection received the A-level component certificate by DNV in 2023. Since then, several more connections have been installed and the technology is now considered as the alternative to the traditional bolted L-flange for commercial scale wind farms.

The C1 Wedge Connection™ technology can deliver a significantly higher ultimate resistance and fatigue resistance than conventional bolted flange connections and its lightweight design offers a commercially attractive alternative to the conventional bolted L-flanges. The installation is expected to allow both faster and safer installation of connections offshore.

In the Wedge Connection JIP full-scale flanges will be manufactured by GRI and Shandong Iraeta which will be welded to can sections by German monopile supplier EEW.

“The goal of this JIP is to create a new standard for offshore wind connections. The feedback from all participating companies is that an alternative solution to the traditional bolted L-flange is highly needed to allow this industry to scale up further.”

Coen van Ruitenburg, Business Development manager C1 Connections B.V.:

About C1 Connections B.V.

C1 Connections BV is a Dutch privately-owned company dedicated to developing and commercially exploiting the C1 Wedge Connection™. C1 Connections BV strives to deploy the C1 Wedge Connection™ as the future standard for highly loaded connections in off- and onshore wind projects.