Abstract
Today’s offshore wind turbine support structures market is largely dominated by steel structures, since steel monopiles account for the vast majority of installations in the last decade and new types of multi-leg steel structures have been developed in recent years. However, as wind turbines become bigger, and potential sites for offshore wind farms are located in ever deeper waters and ever further from the shore, the conditions for the design, transport, and installation of support structures are changing. In light of these facts, this paper identifies and categorizes the challenges and future trends related to the use of concrete for support structures of future offshore wind projects. To do so, recent advances and technologies still under development for both bottom-fixed and floating concrete support structures have been reviewed. It was found that these new developments meet the challenges associated with the use of concrete support structures, as they will allow the production costs to be lowered and transport and installation to be facilitated. New technologies for concrete support structures used at medium and great water depths are also being developed and are expected to become more common in future offshore wind installations. Therefore, the new developments identified in this paper show the likelihood of an increase in the use of concrete support structures in future offshore wind farms. These developments also indicate that the complexity of future support structures will increase due to the development of hybrid structures combining steel and concrete. These evolutions call for new knowledge and technical know-how in order to allow reliable structures to be built and risk-free offshore installation to be executed.
Highlights
In the past two decades, offshore wind has emerged as a new source of renewable energy
Two materials have been used for the construction of support structures for offshore wind turbines: concrete and steel
There has been a clear distinction in their scope of application: concrete has been used for gravity-based substructures and steel has been used for monopiles and multi-leg substructures
Summary
In the past two decades, offshore wind has emerged as a new source of renewable energy. This is illustrated, which shows the annual and cumulative offshore wind capacity installed between 2000 and 2019 According to forecasts, this trend is expected to continue in the coming decades, in line with the targets set by many countries to decarbonize their economies. The cumulative capacity of offshore wind plants in Europe could reach between 45 GW and 100 GW by 2030 [4], and globally as much as 400 GW by 2045 [5]. In line with these forecasts, the European Union strategy for offshore wind recently set the objective of reaching 60 GW by 2030 and 300 GW by 2050, which are estimated to require investments of EUR 800 billion until 2050 and make offshore wind an essential factor or the European Union’s climate neutrality target at the horizon of 2050 [6].
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