The Pile Soil Analysis (PISA) project is being run under the Carbon Trust's Offshore Wind Accelerator programme. It will test smaller monopiles in a bid to reduce the cost of manufacturing the foundations, without compromising load-carrying capacity.
Steel thickness for traditional monopiles is approximately 100 milimetres. Dong believes a small reduction in thickness could cause a "significant contribution" to cutting offshore costs.
The first lighter monopile, manufactured by Bladt Industries and DanSteel, will be installed this week at a site near Cowden, northeast England.
The project will test 20 monopiles across two onshore sites; Cowden, and Dunkirk in northern France.
Backers of the study also includes RWE, Vattenfall, Statoil, Statkraft, SSE and Scottish Power with additional support from Imperial College, London and University College Dublin.
