Abstract
With the deployment of the TetraSpar demonstrator, a significant cost-reduction is realized in the field of offshore floating wind turbines. The TetraSpar floating wind turbine foundation brings a milestone that emphasizes on a modular and fully industrialized foundation that consists of main components already widely available in the current wind energy supply chain. In an effort to provide an open approach to the development of the concept, this paper aims at giving a description of the design in order to enable an educated discussion of different design philosophies and their influence on material usage and production times. The description of the different subcomponents of the system should allow any entity to build a model for comparison and/or benchmarking any of their own findings against this concept. It is the authors’ expectation that this open approach to technological discussion is paramount to obtaining continued cost-reduction in the area of floating offshore wind—for this concept and others.
Highlights
In recent years, the wind energy sector has seen a rapid development, both onshore and offshore.The offshore alone has seen a growth from a cumulative capacity of around 2.5 GW in 2009 to just over22 GW in the end of 2019 [1]
The motivation behind the open access approach of the present paper is to provide industry insight to the TetraSpar Demonstration Floating Wind Turbine Foundation, a concept which addresses a number of these industry challenges
With the fabrication of the TetraSpar Demonstrator foundation nearing its completion, a milestone is reached in the sector of floating offshore wind turbines
Summary
The wind energy sector has seen a rapid development, both onshore and offshore. The average rating of these projects resides around 28 MW [3] and the technologies used are among others the WindFloat semisubmersible by Principle Power [4], Damping Pool barge by IDEOL [5], and the Hywind spar by Equinor [6] Despite this positive development in FOWT concepts, there are still a number of challenges to be addressed for the industry to demonstrate commercial viability. The motivation behind the open access approach of the present paper is to provide industry insight to the TetraSpar Demonstration Floating Wind Turbine Foundation, a concept which addresses a number of these industry challenges. It is the authors opinion that this open information sharing is paramount for the FOWT sector since it enables an educated discussion between designers and better clarity for developers, funding bodies and policymakers, and bringing down the levelized cost of energy (LCOE)
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