Supply Chain Calls for Narrowing Down Floating Wind Platform Designs

“We probably have around 150 different floating wind platform designs at the moment. So how do you design a perfect port for floating wind?”—Tommy Sandtorv, CCO Karmsund Port at Karmsund Port Authority.

Sandtorv shared this thought on 26 November at Offshore Energy Exhibition & Conference (OEEC) in Amsterdam, during a discussion about the challenges in the supply chain arising from the wide range of floater designs out there.

While not all concepts will reach the commercial stage, the number of those planned to be used commercially still needs to come down in order for the supporting infrastructure, such as ports, vessels and vessel equipment, to be established, according to insights from speakers at OEEC’s Floating Wind panel session.

Sandtorv said that ports need to design their facilities together with the industry since this is expensive infrastructure that would be built to serve the market and port owners and operators need to make sure that they build what is needed.

“The perfect port for floating wind hasn’t been built yet. To do this, we first need to agree on what kind of design we are looking at for the future. We are not there yet but we will hopefully arrive there soon”, Tommy Sandtorv said.

Floating wind is very different from fixed-bottom in terms of port requirements since the components and equipment are not only stored there but also installed in the port as well, before being towed to the project site. A floating wind port therefore needs to have space for the turbine assembly and installation of the turbines on top of foundations, and most likely for assembly of the floaters as well as for the wet storage of the floaters.

According to Sandtorv, bringing down the number of floater designs starts with governments and developers, with the former supporting market development and facilitating deployment and the latter pinpointing the designs they are looking into for their projects.

“We see that in the Norwegian market, things are going too slowly and technology development doesn’t progress forward unless there is no market and projects coming up. So we have to start with governments and developers, and then bring the floating platform designers and the T&Is who will do the installation into the discussion to advance the industry”, Tommy Sandtorv said.

Richard den Hollander, Global Business Development and Account Management Director at Seaway7, and Axelle Viré, Professor Floating Offshore Wind at Delft University of Technology, noted that the selection of floating wind platform designs depends on water depths and regional seabed characteristics.

“If you look at Norway, or close to Norway, the SPAR-type of floating wind foundation is a go-to choice, which is probably also the cheapest solution at the moment. It is similar to jackets versus monopiles in fixed-bottom offshore wind”, Richard den Hollander said.

According to Hollander, a game changer in the market would be something like switching from inshore lifting of the turbines to offshore installation. In this approach, the substructures are stored offshore and waiting for the turbine to be installed, also offshore.

“Doing the installation inshore is a huge logistical challenge. There is a solution, installing the turbine on the floating structure offshore. It has already been done by Saipem 7000 for the Hywind Scotland project in Stord. So the next step is – and we have been trying to do that for more than a decade – to find a way together with the wind turbine supplies to install the wind turbines in a floating configuration.”

Den Hollander added that there is an aspect in looking at this type of installation standing in the way that stems from the wind turbine industry being used to onshore construction and trying to recreate onshore environment offshore.

James Young, Chief Strategy and Compliance Officer at JDR Cable Systems, emphasised that there is a need for a good mix of innovation and demonstration and mid- to large-scale projects to progress manufacturing economies of scale to bring the costs down.

“We can’t just rely on a big project to bring the cost down and we need to try these technologies out. Where we did it in offshore wind was the switch in the inter-array technology from 33 kV to 66 kV as we found that there were at least three or four different 66 kV demonstration sites that allowed the technologies to go ahead. This way, you can learn from the technology and capitalise on the benefits of innovation while also, at the same time, deploying some large commercial scale projects as well. So that combination is needed, the mix that includes both innovation and also manufacturing economies of scale”, James Young said.

Axelle Viré from the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) also said that innovations need to be accelerated to drive the cost down.

“We need to get things in the water”, Axelle Viré said.

Responding to a question from the audience on whether it is more feasible to start small when it comes to testing floating wind designs, Viré pointed out that it is important to test smaller-scale with research institutes and universities but also move faster to full-scale testing and demonstration to speed up both technology and project rollout.

“We can always start small, of course, but then I’m a bit worried about the timeframes we are looking at and if we are going to achieve the ambitious plans. I think that, if we go too small first, we’re never going to make it”, Viré said and added that TU Delft is working on building things such as the onshore infrastructure and laboratory-scale testing as reliable and as accurate as possible to support its industry partners and reduce risk of putting bigger wind turbines in the water.

“I would say that, as an industry, we should not start small and continue building up to the full scale for too long. The industry can work with research institutes and universities which have the smaller scale testing facilities and together they can help scale up and move to full-scale and large-scale projects more quickly.”

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