It was a conversation at a party in 1999 that led to Kurt Thomsen—then a 36-year-old part-time crane operator, part-time consultant, part-time paper boy and part-time Cranes Today contributor—getting involved in the wind turbine industry. He met someone from the wind power industry who explained the problems they were having erecting wind turbines out at sea. Transporting the huge turbines and then lifting the nacelles and blades into place in choppy seas was proving a challenge that threatened the feasibility of this young industry.

Thomsen was a construction architect by background. He set to thinking about the problem and came up with a remarkably simple solution that combined a jack-up barge with a transport vessel. Convert a regular container ship by adding a large lattice boom crane and tension legs that could be deployed as outriggers, using a pair of winches working against each other, to stabilise the vessel into a steady platform for a lifting base: the ship could then transport the turbines to site, set down its legs and lift the equipment into place.

Patents were obtained for the conversion process and leg deployment system. Vestas, the Danish manufacturer of wind turbines, bought into the idea as a customer, allowing Thomsen to create A2Sea, with backing from Danish financial investors.

With the help of naval architect Ole Steen Knudsen (OSK), A2Sea acquired and converted two vessels, the Ocean Hanne and Ocean Ady (now called Sea Power and Sea Energy), each equipped with a modified 450t Demag CC 2500. The cranes were big enough to install 3mW turbines, picking loads in this application as heavy as 120t. The first project, installing the Horns Rev wind park off the coast of Denmark for Vestas, successfully proved the time- and money-saving concept.

Thomsen’s career was finally getting serious. Since leaving college in 1983 he had worked as a crane operator, initially on construction sites and then in his local ship repair yard in Fredericia. He went back to college in 1986 for four years to study construction architecture, a course that included quantity surveying and structural engineering, but on graduating found no practical application for his qualification. He continued with crane operating, on and off, when required. “I only needed to work 10 nights a month to make a more than decent living,” he says.

In 1996 he invested in an old 25t Hyco crane (a licensed version of the P&H Omega), selling it 18 months later for a profit, he recalls.

He set up Danish Crane Consultants, hawking his services, and contacted Cranes Today offering to become a contributor, a happy relationship that has endured, although once A2Sea took up his full attention, the writing took a back seat. Thomsen has always been happy to apply himself to anything to help support his growing family (he is married with three sons). In the mid 1990s he also had a part-time job distributing newspapers, bringing in an extra EUR 5,000 a month, he says.

Once A2Sea began to take off, the moneymen behind the company naturally wanted to bring in professional management. Thomsen sees himself as a creative entrepreneur, unlikely to sit well within a corporate environment. He freely admits he is the kind of man who likes to play golf in the office until the creative juices begin to flow. As A2Sea grew, his central importance diminished. “I started at the top and worked my way down,” he says. He was given the role of business development manager. “It got to the stage where the company was running whether I was there or not.” Then after the initial burst of projects, the offshore wind power sector began to stall. Projects stopped getting beyond the drawing board.

&#8220Kurt Thomsen”

“Offshore, installation prices are coming down and the next two or three years it will go ballistic. There are more than 200 offshore wind projects on the slate in Europe alone. That’s enormous potential, and oil prices are doing us a very big favour.

The market had been led by Denmark and the UK. In Denmark a change of government brought an end to projects, Thomsen says, while in the UK the need to resolve transmission issues came to the fore. “Eighteen months ago there was nothing happening in the offshore wind power industry at all. As business development manager with no customers, it was no fun,” he says.

So, in March 2006, Thomsen decided to leave the company he had founded without having made any significant money from it. He had other ideas to develop. He worked up a scheme for constructing large buildings in areas of Europe where labour is cheap and transporting them, fully built or in large kit sections, to places where construction is more expensive. Although no projects have yet resulted, it remains a vision for him. At the same time, apparently with more success, he also started a business importing and installing kitchens.

Then, in May 2007, more than a year after leaving A2Sea, his phone rang while he was queuing for a hot dog. A London-based investment team from a major international bank had done a business study of the offshore turbine installation market. A2Sea by now had a near monopoly of the market since acquiring Mammoet Van Oord’s Jumping Jack crane barge. The bank saw potential for a new player and needed someone to front it.

The new company, Gaoh Offshore Ltd, was incorporated on 1 October and began operations two weeks later with just two full time employees. Thomsen, now aged 44, put in his own money to secure a share in the region of 5%–10%. “It’s the reverse of when I started A2Sea,” he says, “Then, I had a good idea and no money. Here, the money came looking for me with the ideas.”

Again working with OSK as consultants, Thomsen is now in the vessel design phase. As before, a standard container vessel with legs is the basis, but this time it is being designed and built from a clean sheet of paper, not a conversion of an existing ship. “It is an entirely new design that I came up with,” he says. He knows better than anyone how to avoid infringing A2Sea’s patents, since it was he who filed them.

Sourcing components is an issue, with quoted lead times unsatisfactorily long. A rack and pinion design for deploying the legs would take 24 months to be delivered, so another way was required. Since he is still going through the patent process, Thomsen is discreet about his new solution for deploying the legs, saying only: “It is much simpler than what is on the market. We are applying simple techniques. It is very important that if something goes wrong, anyone on board can see what’s wrong and fix it.”

He is also looking to have greater lifting capacity than before. He is in discussions with Liebherr Nenzing over an MTC 78000 mast type crane, which has an offshore rating of 1600t capacity at 33m, says Thomsen. “We should be able to get 500t to 600t out of it for lifting turbines,” he adds.

This is significant because the turbines have got bigger since he began A2Sea, up to 5mW capacity and above, he says. While the Jumping Jack crane barge (now called Sea Jack), with its Manitowoc M1200 Ringer crane, can cope with the larger turbines, it does not have the transport advantages of the crane ships.

&#8220-Kurt Thomsen”

“I think the onshore wind industry has its future behind it, to be honest. And I’m not saying this because I am starting a new offshore company. It’s just an observation. I think the people who have been buying cranes for the onshore market are set to get their fingers burnt in two, three or four years from now.

The industry is also looking to put turbines in deeper water. A2Sea’s two crane ships have operational depths of 27m and 14.3m. Sea Jack can work in waters up to 35m deep. Thomsen is looking to go beyond this, up to 45m or even 55m.

Thomsen expects to complete the vessel design by May 2008. A 24-month construction phase would then see the first ship ready for action sometime in 2010. The market will cater for more than one vessel of this type, he says.

Despite the frustrations he experienced in his latter days at A2Sea, Thomsen is confident that offshore wind power has a huge future, especially as on-shore developments face increasing public opposition.

Although if has been slow to take off, offshore wind power is set grow significantly, Thomsen firmly believes. “Offshore, installation prices are coming down and the next two or three years it will go ballistic,” he predicts. “There are more than 200 offshore wind projects on the slate in Europe alone. That’s enormous potential, and oil prices are doing us a very big favour.”

The European Wind Energy Association says that the current generating capacity of the 18 offshore wind parks installed so far in the coastal waters of Denmark, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden and the UK have a collective generating capacity of close to 900mW. This represents just 2% of the cumulative installed capacity of wind power in the European Union.

However, it forecasts that if planned offshore developments come on stream, total offshore generating capacity in eight EU countries could reach 15gW by 2015 and perhaps 40gW by 2020.

Thomsen believes that the offshore wind industry will grow at the expense of the onshore market. “I think the onshore wind industry has its future behind it, to be honest,” he says, “And I’m not saying this because I am starting a new offshore company. It’s just an observation. I think the people who have been buying cranes for the onshore market are set to get their fingers burnt in two, three or four years from now.”