Latest episode of our Green is the New Black series identifies the prime movers in floating offshore wind and also the top five in the ‘chasing pack’
Market forecasts predict floating offshore wind will reach 16.5GW by 2030 and the pressure is on to achieve that goal as the world grapples with energy security issues while continuing to meet climate targets.
To explore the opportunities in the floating offshore wind market and to understand how the market will shift from the current demonstration phase to the commercialisation of utility-scale projects, PEi Editor-in-Chief Kelvin Ross hosted a digital discussion with Maf Smith of Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), Una Brosnan of Mainstream Renewable Power and Peter Clive of Black & Veatch.
Smith, Vice-Chair of the Floating Offshore Wind Taskforce at GWEC, presented a summary of GWEC’s latest report on floating offshore wind market potential around the world.
The report predicts growth of 16.5GW by 2030 based on real project activity and investor confidence around delivery.
This projection grew from a 6GW forecast in 2019, which Smith suggests is the result of increasingly effective regulatory and policy frameworks.
According to Smith, the market will accelerate rapidly, building out scale in the major leading markets of UK, South Korea, France and Japan.
However, some of the less developed markets, referred to as a chasing pack of markets, will see floating offshore wind offer great economic value based on current technical offshore resources.
Five chasing-pack markets were identified, with several favourable conditions making these countries attractive markets for the development of floating offshore wind:
- Ireland has ambitious government plans and favourable site conditions, an attractive floating offshore wind market if the transmission grid and port infrastructure is upgraded.
- Italy has a lack of space on land and the absence of sites suitable for fixed-bottom wind will drive a focus onto floating offshore wind.
- Morocco’s government wishes to increase energy security and lacks access to fixed offshore wind.
- US (Pacific) also lacks access to fixed offshore wind sites, but has a high ambition from the state and federal governments pointing to rapid growth of floating offshore wind. However, major grid investments are required.
- The Philippines is experiencing high economic growth, which is driving electricity demand. Floating offshore wind sites with good resources are located close to load centres, however, tariffs and infrastructure could pose challenges.
Smith emphasised that in order for the market to be ready for floating offshore wind, policy must be in place, together with permitting structures and grid infrastructure to facilitate generation.
Moving from demonstration to commercialisation
Una Brosnan, Head of Offshore Strategy & New Markets at Mainstream Renewable Power, spoke about the urgent need to decrease costs of floating offshore wind and increase scale.
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She said: “There are a number of demonstrations globally, however, now we need to commercialise [these projects].”
Brosnan explained that there are approximately 40 different concepts being demonstrated. In order to condense these technologies and speed up market development, synergies between fixed bottom and floating wind must be identified and exploited.
She stressed the importance of learning lessons and utilising existing skills from the hydrocarbon sector to speed up progress. Such an example, said Brosnan, is the Hywind Tampen project developed by Equinor.
The project includes five oil & gas platforms with the installation of 11 units using 8MW turbines. This wind installation will result in a 33% reduction in power demand, offsetting about 300 000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
Floating offshore wind news:
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Brosnan also discussed strategies to ensure floating wind reaches cost parity with fixed bottom by 2030. Key focus areas include; driving project and manufacturing scale, ensuring dynamic cable optimisation, improving installation and O&M strategies and gaining a better understanding of how turbine controllers interact with a dynamic substructure.
Looking to the future
In order to support the rapid advancement of floating offshore wind, Peter Clive, Principal Wind Energy, Black & Veatch spoke to the importance of good quality, site-specific data, as well as breaking down the barriers to digitalisation.
According to Clive, digitalisation is not always appropriately governed nor well coordinated by stakeholders. “We must de-silo our projects and deploy data sharing protocols to ensure end-to-end visibility across the project lifecycle,” said Clive.
In order to achieve this, Clive suggests project stakeholders gain a better understanding of the data model and use case, as well as understand how the data is acquired. “We are moving away from looking at data as primitive variables. Data represents the environment we interact with, like how turbines interact with various weather conditions.”
Clive emphasised that legacy thinking and wisdom are holding back development.
“This is highly collaborative, interdisciplinary space – from a system engineering point of view. Digitalisation is important to improve coordination of the energy sector and integration of the energy sector into the broader economic context.”
Clive described two different floating wind scenarios, including in depths of less than 100m, and in depths of up to 1300m off the coast, several 100km from shore or from a good grid connection.
No matter the nature of the floating offshore wind project, or the depth of the water, Clive suggests we exploit the synergies with traditional oil & gas majors to ensure greater success. “It’s a transition from extractivism to interactionism, from depleting finite resources to processes where we interact with the environment in a way that doesn’t cause damage.”
The full webcast recording is available on demand.
Click here to see the rest of the Green is the New Black series
