Case Study: Keystone Engineering cuts installation costs 20% and halves design time with Bentley OpenWindPower

Keystone Engineering Cuts Installation Costs by 20% on First Offshore U.S. Wind Farm

Keystone Engineering was tasked with designing jacket‑type substructures for the five 6 MW turbines at the Block Island Wind Farm—the first commercial offshore wind farm in the U.S.—and faced complex coupled aerodynamic and hydrodynamic loading, strict fatigue and extreme‑event requirements, and the need to minimize steel weight and installation costs. To meet these challenges, Keystone used Bentley’s OpenWindPower to collaborate with turbine designers and model thousands of time‑domain simulations for a robust, interoperable design process.

Bentley’s OpenWindPower enabled simultaneous simulations, seamless interoperability with Bladed, and efficient management of terabytes of data, which shortened the design cycle by about 50% and supported more than 150 parallel simulations. Using Bentley’s software, Keystone produced jackets that were 15% lighter and reduced installation costs by more than 20% while ensuring a 20‑year design life and resilience to hurricane‑force conditions.

Keystone Engineering

Zachary Finucane

P.E., Project Manager