Floating Offshore Renewable Energy Farms. A Life-Cycle Cost Analysis at Brindisi, Italy

Daniela Pantusa,Giuseppe Roberto Tomasicchio,Antonio Francone

doi:10.3390/en13226150

Daniela Pantusa, Giuseppe Roberto Tomasicchio + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/en13226150

Copy DOI

Abstract

The present paper deals with the Life-Cycle Cost (LCC) of an offshore renewable energy farm that is currently a topic of interest for operators and investors. The LCC analysis refers to the Cost Breakdown Structure (CBS) considering all the phases of life span, and it has been carried out for floating offshore wind farms (FOWFs) and hybrid wind-wave farms (HWWFs). For HWWFs, this paper proposes a hybrid wind-wave energy system (HWWES), which provides the coupling of wave energy converter (WEC) with Tension Leg Platform (TLP) or Spar Buoy platform (SB). The LCC analysis has been carried out considering: (i) FOWF consisting of TLP floating platforms; (ii) FOWF consisting of a SB floating platforms; (iii) HWWF realized with the conceived hybrid system coupling the WEC with the TLP platform; (iv) HWWF realized with the conceived hybrid system coupling the WEC with SB platform. In addition to the LCC evaluation, the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) analysis has also been carried out. The site chosen for the study is off the port of Brindisi, southern Italy. This work’s interest lies in having performed a LCC analysis for FOWF and HWWF in the Mediterranean that is an area of growing interest for offshore renewable energy, and obtained results have allowed making assessments on costs for offshore energy farms.

Highlights

Offshore wind energy is considered to have great potential for growth, and it is expected to become one of the main renewable sources of energy [1,2].The offshore wind farms currently operating employ fixed foundation in shallow water
For the case studies described in this paper, considering the methodology described in Section 3, the parameters necessary to calculate the cost of the entire life cycle of the energy farms have been derived by the information available, even if these are still limited, and on the basis of comparable studies present in the literature, considering different features of the devices and the location of the installation site
The values follow the same trend for hybrid wind-wave farms (HWWFs) with a cost for the farm realized with the hybrid wind-wave energy system (HWWES) that combines the wave energy converter (WEC) with the Tension Leg Platform (TLP) platform equal to 257.35 M€ (Table 6) and a cost of 280.07 M€ for the farm realized with the HWWES that combines the WEC and Spar Buoy (SB) platform, respectively (Table 7)

Summary

Introduction

The offshore wind farms currently operating employ fixed foundation in shallow water. The supporting structures for wind turbines are floating type, and the main typology are the Semi-Submersible (SS), the Tension. Regarding the SS platform, several studies and projects are under development [3,4,5], and a review can be found in Liu et al (2016) [6], while for the TLP typology, most of the projects are still in the scale test phase [7,8,9,10]. Regarding the SB platform, several studies have been carried out in recent years on this typology [11,12,13,14,15] and in October 2017, the world’s first floating wind farm, the 30 MW “Hywind Scotland,” became operating (https://www.equinor.com)

Methods

Results

Conclusion