Abstract

The global floating offshore wind energy industry is rapidly maturing with several technologies having been installed at pilot and demonstration scales. As the industry progresses to full array-scale deployments, the optimization of marine activities related to installation, operation \& maintenance and decommissioning presents a significant opportunity for cost reduction. This paper reviews the various marine operations challenges towards the commercialisation of floating wind in the context of spar-type, semi-submersible and Tension Leg Platform (TLP) technologies. Knowledge gaps and research trends are identified along with a review of innovations at various stages of development which are intended to widen weather windows, reduce installation costs and improve the health and safety of floating wind related marine operations.

Highlights

  • Wind turbines are moving further offshore to deeper waters and are exploiting higher wind speeds in harsher environments 10 (McCann (2016))

  • Numerous investigations for developing efficient and optimum Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) platforms and various innovative design concepts have been evolving in the last few years (Uzunoglu et al (2016), EWEA (2013))

  • Comparative figures for the floating wind energy industry are unavailable due to a lack of projects, investigations by Castro-Santos (2016) show that approximately 36% of the total floating project costs are incurred during the installation, exploitation and dismantling activities .Castro-Santos et al (2018a) have revealed that the size of the floating wind farms has a considerable impact on installation costs and LCOE

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Summary

Introduction

Wind turbines are moving further offshore to deeper waters and are exploiting higher wind speeds in harsher environments 10 (McCann (2016)). Several pilot and demonstration-scale floating wind farms are operational in different parts of the world (eg: Wind float Atlantic – Portugal (25 MW), Hywind – Scotland(30MW)) and there is a robust pipeline of projects 15 which is expected to deliver 250 GW installed floating capacity by 2050 (DNV (2020), James and Ros (2015)). To realize this ambition, significant reductions in LCOE (Levelized Cost of Energy) will be required across all key stages in the development of a floating wind farm (Figure 1). A review of the projects that have reached the Technology Readiness Level 7 (TRL7) (EC (2017)) or above is provided with a focus on the marine operation strategies which they employed

Spar-type
Semi-Submersible Type
Other upcoming projects
Metocean Assessment and Analysis
Environmental limits for installation, O & M and decommissioning
Cost modelling of floating wind marine operations
Health, Safety and Environment (HSE)
Innovations applicable to Floating Offshore Wind Turbines
Shared mooring and anchoring systems
Dynamic positioning for FOWTs
Walk-to-work for FOWTs
Findings
Conclusions
Full Text
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