A large industry consortium have started a Joint Industry Project (JIP) to make the C1 Wedge Connection by Dutch company C1 Connections, market ready for commercial scale deployment for both Monopile-Transition Piece connections as well as for Foundation to Tower connections.
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 C1 Wedge Connection™ technology is said to deliver a significantly higher ultimate resistance and fatigue resistance than conventional bolted flange connections and its lightweight design should offer a commercially attractive alternative to the conventional bolted L-flanges. The installation is expected to allow both faster and safer installation of connections offshore.
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.
Wedge Connection JIP
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 industry consortium consists, beside C1 Connections, of bp, TotalEnergies, RWE, Vattenfall, EnBW, Iberdrola, Ocean Winds, Ørsted, Equinor, Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy, Vestas, and GE Vernova.
Goal of the Wedge Connection JIP is to provide the participants with insight into the full production supply chain from flange manufacturing to 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.
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. Source: C1 Connections
