A 3D-printed concrete anchor for floating wind turbines was among a pack of eight innovative technologies named as winners in a £1m ($1.25m) competition funded by the Scottish government and run by the UK Carbon Trust as part of a joint industry project (JIP).
The JIP scheme, supported by 14 leading offshore wind developers, was designed to address four key “challenge areas” in commercialising floating wind: monitoring and inspection, mooring systems, heavy lift maintenance and tow-to-port maintenance.
Companies from sectors including oil & gas, IT and telecommunications, and engineering all won funding, which will cover a range of activities from desktop studies through to offshore demonstration, depending on the level of maturity of a given technology.
“We are funding this Carbon Trust competition in order to address key technical challenges in the sector. Given Scotland’s unique deep-water profile, floating wind will undoubtedly play a huge role in our future energy system, as we transition to a net-zero economy and we know that key overseas markets are also looking to exploit floating wind technology to meet their own energy needs,” said Scotland’s minister for energy Paul Wheelhouse.
“The innovative solutions developed by the competition winners will help reduce costs in the sector and could allow floating wind technology to reach commercial scale deployment earlier than previously anticipated. That could prove vital as Scotland and other coastal nations seek to head off the climate emergency.”
Carbon Trust offshore wind unit director Jan Matthiesen stated: “Floating wind is on the precipice of scaling to deliver significant capacity in the energy system. The competition is supporting a number of exciting technology innovations in critical challenge areas identified by industry.”
The winners are:
- RCAM Technologies and the Floating Wind Technology Company, for a concrete anchor, fabricated with 3D printing technology for floating wind turbines, that suction-embeds into the seabed;
- Fugro, AS Mosley, and University of Strathclyde, for condition monitoring software that uses acceleration and motion data points from floating wind structures to calculate a unit responds to stress and load;
- Technology from Ideas and WFS Technologies, for a load monitoring system for mooring spreads, which also acts to dampener on lines;
- Dublin Offshore, for a mooring system load reduction devicethat is fixed part-way up the line and pivots in the water to minimise wave-driven movement;
- Intelligent Mooring Systems and University of Exeter’s new pressure-based dampener which sits between the platform and mooring line to reduce the load;
- Vryhof, for an adjustable seabed lock that can be used to tighten or loosen the tension of the mooring lines;
- Conbit, for a nacelle-mounted temporary crane used for maintenance offshore; and
- Aker Solutions, for a splice box connecting two dynamic array cables that allows for ‘wet-storage’ on the seabed when a turbine is towed to port.
Floating wind is forecast to be on its way to being a market worth tens of billions of pounds by mid-century if the British government adapts the Contracts for Difference auction system to support the sector, as a study last year from RenewableUK (RUK) and Scottish Renewables(SR) showed, with as much as £33.6bn ($43.4bn) of economic activity and 17,000 in-country jobs created by 2050.
Scotland’s draft sectoral marine plan for offshore wind energyoutlines Holyrood’s plans to deliver up to 10GW of offshore wind, the majority of which will be in waters deeper than would be suitable for bottom-fixed turbines.
Analysts range widely in their global forecasts for floating wind, with estimates spread from as little as 6GWup to almost 19GW by 2030 – with arrays in development in all major maritime regions and over 20GW of commercial-scale projects in early planning – and the build-out all influenced by how quickly levellised cost of energy numbers can be brought down to be competitive with conventional offshore wind, that is, sub-€50/MWh.
