Abstract
The most important single event of the last years in wind energy technology is the reduction in the cost of producing wind electricity offshore, a reduction that can reach 75%, depending on the system boundary considered, for installations commissioned by 2024. Surprisingly, there is very little scientific literature showing how this reduction is being achieved.The objective of this paper is to analyse the evidence behind cost reduction in one of the most significant cost elements of offshore wind farms, the installation of foundations and turbines. This cost is directly dependent on the daily rates of the installation vessels and on the days it takes to install those wind farm elements. Therefore, we collected installation data from 87 wind farms installed from 2000 to 2017, to establish the exact time for installation in each.The results show that advances have reached 70% reduction in installation times throughout the period for the whole set, turbine plus foundation. Most of these improvements (and the corresponding impact in reducing costs) relate to the larger size of turbines installed nowadays. There is, therefore, not any leap forward in the installation process, but only incremental improvements applied to turbines that are now four times as large as in 2000.
Highlights
IntroductionIt is offshore that wind energy has traditionally most been presented as an energy source with a huge unrealised potential
Wind energy, both onshore and offshore, is one of the key technological options for a shift to a decarbonised energy supply causing, among other benefits, a reduction in fossil fuel use and in greenhouse gas emissions [1].It is offshore that wind energy has traditionally most been presented as an energy source with a huge unrealised potential
This research presents for the first time the quantification in temporal terms of the learning-by-doing and technological improvements in installation of turbines and foundations of offshore wind farms
Summary
It is offshore that wind energy has traditionally most been presented as an energy source with a huge unrealised potential To date, this is because of the complexity of the technology and project management, the harsh marine environment, and the related high cost of installing wind turbines in the seas. One of the data issues shown by this research is the very disperse data set giving R2 = 0.05 (see Fig. 4b in [2]), when construction times are “measured as the period between the beginning of (...) offshore construction and the date of commissioning”, perhaps a relatively low level of detail These authors discuss the impact of water depth in driving installation costs.
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