Abstract
Floating turbines are attracting increasing interest today. However, the power generation efficiency of a floating turbine is highly dependent on its motion stability in sea water. This issue is more marked, particularly when the floating turbines operate in relatively shallow water. In order to address this issue, a new concept motion stabilizer is studied in this paper. It is a completely passive device consisting of a number of heave plates. The plates are connected to the foundation of the floating wind turbine via structural arms. Since the heave plates are completely, rather than partially, exposed to water, all surfaces of them can be fully utilized to create the damping forces required to stabilize the floating wind turbine. Moreover, their stabilizing effect can be further amplified due to the application of the structural arms. This is because torques will be generated by the damping forces via the structural arms, and then applied to stabilizing the floating turbine. To verify the proposed concept motion stabilizer, its practical effectiveness on motion reduction is investigated in this paper. Both numerical and experimental testing results have shown that after using the proposed concept stabilizer, the motion stability of the floating turbine has been successfully improved over a wide range of wave periods even in relatively shallow water. Moreover, the comparison has shown that the stabilizer is more effective in stabilizing the floating wind turbine than single heave plate does. This suggests that the proposed concept stabilizer may provide a potentially viable solution for stabilizing floating wind turbines.
Highlights
Attributing to the successful implementation of the Round 1 to Round 3 offshore wind development programs, the UK consistently tops the international rankings for offshore wind market
The survey has shown that fixed foundations account for nearly 40% of the total cost of bringing an offshore wind turbine to fruition [3]
It is seen that most existing floating wind turbines are installed in >50 m this point of view, this kind of floating turbine cannot be widely adopted in the future British depth water. They can be roughly classified into the following three categories according to the offshore wind market if it is not re-designed for application in relatively shallow water
Summary
Attributing to the successful implementation of the Round 1 to Round 3 offshore wind development programs, the UK consistently tops the international rankings for offshore wind market. The survey has shown that fixed foundations account for nearly 40% of the total cost of bringing an offshore wind turbine to fruition [3] This makes the offshore wind industry difficult to make profit even without considering the operation and maintenance costs of wind turbines, which on average accounts for 20–25% of the total cost of wind power project [4]. Siemens’ experience suggests that the application of fixed foundations in deep water will become prohibitively expensive due to the increased installation difficulties [7,8]. For these reasons, floating wind turbines are attracting increasing interest in recent years and are regarded as a potential driver to lower the COE due to their potential advantages of easier installation, transportation, and decommission. France’s Energy Ministry has awarded contract to build two 24 MW floating wind projects in the Mediterranean Sea, which are to be commissioned by 2020 [12]
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