Ireland: Research and Markets Presents Report on Offshore Wind Turbine Foundation

Research and Markets has announced the addition of GlobalData’s new report “Offshore Wind Turbine Foundation – Key Issues and Emerging Trends” to their offering.

Offshore Wind Turbine Foundation – Key Issues and Emerging Trends

Offshore wind is an emerging industry. With stronger and more consistent wind speeds than onshore wind farms, it is being increasingly explored all over the world for its high yield. In 2010, the cumulative installed capacity for offshore wind, across the world, stood at 3.1 GW, contributing around 1.6% of the total wind power capacity.

Currently, the offshore wind industry is facing a number of challenges. These challenges include availability of skilled personnel, lack of appropriate technology catering to offshore requirements, shortage of appropriate auxiliary services, incompatibility with existing grid infrastructure, insufficient integration into the energy system and competition for space with other industries like telecom and oil and gas.

Many of the European offshore wind turbines have witnessed a design fault in grouting. Due to this design fault, the grout injected during the installation of offshore wind farms is breaking up, which has shifted the turbines within monopile foundations.

As per the industry estimates around 600 of Europe’s installed offshore wind turbines are facing the issue of dissolved grouting, and re-strengthening of the affected wind turbines may cost around 28.71m ($40.25m) in total.

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Press release, September 19, 2012; Image: RWE