Plate plant at Gwangyang Works was approved by Denmark's DNV
as a 'renewable steel plant'
Uniform yield point plate products are also certified as wind
power generator materials… Responds to quality improvement and economical
design needs
Plans to preoccupy the rapidly increasing global demand for
offshore wind power steel and contribute to reducing carbon emissions of
customers
POSCO
received approval from DNV*, the world's leading certification authority in the
energy sector, as the first global steel company to produce plate for wind
power.
* DNV (Det Norske Veritas): As the world's leading accredited registrar and
classification society for the energy sector, it evaluates and certifies safety
from materials to technical design, focusing on the energy, oil and gas,
shipbuilding and marine industry.
POSCO
and DNV signed a 'Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the certification of
steel products applied in the wind power sector' and started the certification
process in March.
DNV
intensively inspected and evaluated the quality management system, production
process and facilities, product testing facility, and related certifications of
the Gwangyang Works' plate plant, which produces eco-friendly Greenable* plates
for about three months and approved it as a 'Shop approval in renewable energy'
in July.
*Greenable: POSCO's integrated brand of eco-friendly and high-performance steel
products and solutions that is applied when producing, transporting, and
storing future eco-friendly energy such as wind power, solar power, and
hydrogen
In
addition, it has certified the 'EN-S355' standard plate product that
implemented the world's first uniform yield point (YP) made at Gwangyang Works
as a 'Type and component certification of wind turbines'. POSCO's uniform yield
point product is the first thick-plate product certified by DNV as a steel for
renewable energy.
Recently,
as wind towers have become larger, the thickness of the plate is generally
increased to support the load of the structure but POSCO's uniform yield point
plate for wind towers can maintain 355 MPa strength up to 100mm thick, reducing
the use of steel by about 3% when applied to wind towers of 10MW or more.
Wind
tower turbine designers had previously had no choice but to design with the
yield point for each thickness specified in the European standard but this
certification laid an institutional foundation for reflecting POSCO's plate
products with uniform yield point in structural design.
In
particular, POSCO can provide a solution to cope with the increase in the
quantity required due to the increase in the wind turbine size and the raw
material price because the manufacturing cost does not differ much compared to
the existing steel materials. It is also expected to be able to meet the recent
demand required by the wind industry to reduce production costs per power unit
(LCOE, Levelized Cost of Electricity).
Eul-son
Park, Head of Energy and Shipbuilding Materials Marketing Office of POSCO
attended the certification plaque award ceremony on the 26th and said, "We
will establish a supply system of high functional plates for wind such as
processing certification of plate products for substructures with improved
performance." "In the future, the customer expects to be able to
reduce the use of steel for towers and substructures by about 10% under the
same design conditions," he added.
Recently,
the wind energy market is growing at an average annual rate of about 6.6%,
mainly offshore wind power. POSCO plans to actively preoccupy the rapidly
increasing global demand for offshore wind power steel based on technology and
solution marketing demonstrated in the offshore plant market, while
continuously developing eco-friendly customized steel materials to contribute
to reducing carbon emissions of customers.
â–˛
POSCO held a plaque awarding event to commemorate DNV's approval of the
thick-plate plant in Gwangyang Works as the first global steel company to
produce plates for the wind power industry on the 26th. From left to right:
Young-chun Lee, Head of Plate Rolling Department at Gwangyang Works, Eul-son
Park, Head of Energy and Shipbuilding Materials Marketing Office, Seoung-jun
Kim, Deputy Head of Process & Quality Sector at Gwangyang Works, and
Young-min Paik, Director of Renewables Certification of DNV Korea.