The fast-accelerating global offshore wind build-out could face a major “slow down” as construction of installation vessels fails to keep pace with the ongoing scale-up of turbine size, a new report from Rystad Energy has emphasised.
The Oslo-based analyst group said the issue – a perennial problem for wind turbine installation vessel (WTIV) owners as OEMs have stepped-up the size of their biggest models from 3MW to 15MW – threatens the most ambitious forecasts for the sector, including the International Energy Agency’s that sees the worldwide fleet swelling to 2TW by 2050 from 35GW today.
