MS#08.1 Nature Inclusive Designs for Floating Offshore Wind Turbines
G. VERAO FERNÁNDEZ¹, C. WINDT¹, M. STREICHER², M. PENALBA³
¹ TU Braunschweig|² Ghent University|³ Mondragón University
Floating wind special features
The European Union Strategic Energy Technology Plan has targeted and installed offshore wind capacity of 60 GW by 2030. Today, Europe already has a total of 19.38 GW installed capacity of bottom fixed offshore wind energy. Technical advancements in the offshore wind industry together with economies of scale have led to larger offshore wind turbines that need to be deployed further offshore to benefit from higher wind speeds. This means deployments in greater water depths, resulting in the emerging sector of floating offshore wind (FOW). Despite their potential, FOW turbines (FOWTs) are still at an early stage of development and today only a few full-scale prototypes have been successfully installed in Portugal, Scotland, Spain, and France.
Among the reasons for the lack of technology commercialization in FOW are the higher environmental loads on the foundations and structures at deep water depths, as well as the additional complexity of the entire system. While techno-economic optimisation is one of the main motivators for innovation and a push towards commercialization of FOW technologies, positive environmental impact of marine installations is recently moving into focus. The installation of FOWTs and the supporting infrastructure has an environmental impact on the aquatic ecosystem, which is already damaged and in need of restoration from industrial activity. To that end, Nature Inclusive Designs (NIDs) show significant potential for compensating, mitigating, and/or restoring the impacts of FOW farms on biodiversity.
In literature, it is possible to identify three types of NIDs that do not specifically target FOWTs based on the part of the system which they could be integrated: i) add-ons for the floating substructure (e.g., fish cages, fish hotels, etc.), ii) anchor system and associated scour protection (e.g., adapted gradings, artificial reef structures,...) and iii) subsea cable protection layers (e.g. ballast bags, mattresses, etc.). Despite the fact that some of these technologies have already been deployed nearshore, there is little to no information on how to implement these technologies for specific FOWT concepts or their ecological success. The objective of this mini-symposium is to foster the discussion on NIDs solutions for bottom-fixed and floating OWTs focusing on:
- State-of-the-art of NIDs for OWT.
- Methodology for development of NIDs solutions for OWT.
- Technology innovations of NIDs solutions for OWT.
- Effects of NIDs on OWT hydrodynamics.
- Prototypes and pilots related to NIDs for OWT.
- Experimental modelling of NIDs.
- Numerical modelling of NIDs.
- In the current mini-symposium we have listed six contributions from the INF4INiTY project of which we can provide the tentative titles:
- Integrated designs for future floating offshore wind farm technology –Towards nature inclusive innovations
- Fundamental study on the effect of macroalage on the hydrodynamic loads on offshore structures
- Numerical modelling of wave-vegetation dynamics of macroalage using DualSPHysics coupled with the FEA solver Chrono
- An experimental method to evaluate the hydrodynamic loads on floating wind platforms with artificial reef structures
- Eco-conscious techno-economic assessment of floating offshore wind farms
- Time-Domain Dynamic Analysis of 15 MW FOWT using MOST