CROWN 2 - Cost Reduction for Offshore Wind Now 2

"CROWN 2 builds on a previously-funded project (CROWN) that aims to completely change the way offshore wind foundations are protected from corrosion. While a well-established and robust solution is to use a paint and galvanic anode approach, protection lifetime is limited by paint degradation and anode mass. Such systems are also expensive to manufacture, install and maintain.

The consortium will be investigating whether a single coating of aluminium, applied to the surface by arc-spraying, can replace paint and anodes entirely. If successful, such a coating would lower the cost of wind energy, by removing bottlenecks in the manufacture of wind turbine foundations and eliminating a significant amount of secondary steelwork that has to be expensively welded by skilled professionals."