Developing Offshore Floating Technology

Offshore wind farms have experienced a rapid increase in deployment since 1991 when the first offshore wind farm was installed in Vindeby, Denmark, with a total capacity of 4.95 MW [1]. Nowadays there is a total 57.6 GW of global installed offshore wind capacity with 13.6 GW found with in the UK, second only to China [2]. The vast majority of the offshore sites are located within 100m of the coast, with a maximum depth of 40m [3]. These coastal regions are chosen for many reasons with the primary reason being cost. Closer farms are by more accessible, reducing vessel costs during installation and allowing raid repair and maintenance during operation. In addition to the physical accessibility of these locations, the ability to install infrastructure such as met masts, which use anemometers and wind vanes have been the industry standard for climatology assessments since 1955 [4]. In shallow waters, with small turbines met mast can be cost effective, allowing a comprehensive knowledge of prevailing wind conditions, typically referred to as the Wind Resource Assessments (WRA) to be completed. WRA have become an essential part of the consenting and licencing of offshore wind farm developments and play a crucial role in the economics and financing of the project. This is because the WRA provides a forecast of the energy yield over the proposed life time of the wind farm. For this reason location of deployment is reviewed under the following KPIs of the measurement campaign: accuracy, availability, uncertainty and sensitively. Failure to meet requirements during a WRA can drastically affect the funding available to developers. As the development of windfarms moves further a field (where the wind is more consistent and more energy dense) to water depths greater than 100m and turbines increase in size (hub height measurements increase) met mast are no longer cost effective and new instrumentation will be required to provide the high quality data required in for a WRA.