Over 100 engineering companies from around the world submitted their ideas to the Carbon Trust on how to cost effectively build offshore wind turbines in severe weather conditions as far as 100 miles out to sea and in waters up to 60 metres deep. Each design was rigorously assessed by an expert panel of judges including the Carbon Trust’s partners: Airtricity Developments, DONG Energy, RWE Innogy owner of Npower Renewables, Scottish Power Renewables and Statoil.
The seven new designs have the potential to revolutionise the construction of offshore wind farms, reducing costs and overcoming engineering challenges currently facing the industry. They provide a glimpse of the future with radical concepts such as floating turbines anchored to the sea bed and spider-like tripod structures.
“Building thousands of turbines offshore to provide a quarter of our power needs is the greatest engineering challenge we face in the coming decade. Without new thinking to cut costs many planned projects could remain on the drawing board putting our carbon targets and energy security at risk. We must urgently re-engineer our energy system and building offshore wind farms while creating onshore jobs must play a central role,” Tom Delay, Chief Executive of the Carbon Trust, said.
Speeding up deep water deployment
Lower costs are vital if Britain is to install the 6,000 or so offshore wind turbines needed to ensure offshore wind meets a quarter of its electricity needs by 2020. The current price tag is up to £75 billion with deep water foundations accounting for 20% or more of a wind farm’s total project costs. The goal of the new designs is to reduce the current costs of foundations by at least a quarter.
The new designs will also enable the industry to deploy turbines in the much deeper and rougher sea conditions that will be experienced by the significantly larger offshore wind projects beginning in 2012 as part of the Crown Estate’s third round of licensing, where conditions are even more treacherous than any wind farm sites to-date around the UK’s coast, which makes building and operating future wind farms offshore an expensive business.
Rob Hastings, Director of the marine estate at The Crown Estate said: “Offshore wind energy generation is starting to mature, as the landowner of the seabed, The Crown Estate welcomes this competition and hopes that these new designs reduce capital and investment costs required to deliver offshore wind as an alternative, secure energy supply.”
The designs will receive up to £100,000 support for concept development, engineering analysis, commercial feasibility and technical assistance. Of the shortlisted designs revealed today, up to three final winners will have their designs built and installed in large scale demonstration projects in 2010-2012 with funding from a consortium led by the Carbon Trust.
While the UK alone needs more than 6,000 new offshore foundations by 2020, the global number of offshore wind turbines will reach 15,000 or more: a global market for foundations worth up to £2.5 billion a year, which shows clear market potential for the winning designs.
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