Today, wind energy is becoming an integral part of the global energy mix. Due to the parallel challenges of a continuously growing energy demand and the insight that energy production must become sustainable, wind energy is expected to grow exponentially. To meet these parallel challenges, governments have decided upon ambitious national goals for wind energy production.
Yet, to date the growth of wind energy production has been hampered by a number of topographical, administrative and technological challenges.
Onshore wind energy production is affected by insufficent wind conditions and lengthy license processes, often followed by appeals, by which both risk and cost have increased significantly.
Offshore, where wind conditions are significantly better, energy producers face the challenge of finding seabed areas suitable for installations of large-scale, bottom-mounted wind farms. Beside the environmental effects of bottom-mounted turbines, the costs of installation, service and maintenance have showed to be substantial. Further, due to depth limitations, many wind farms have been installed near the coast line, causing local discontent and resulting in lengthy appeal processes. Again, both risk and cost have increased significantly.
To tackle the disadvantages of bottom-mounted nearshore wind turbines, producers have experimented with wind turbines mounted on floating structures. Yet, floating wind turbines to date have lacked the scale, stability and longevity necessary to decrease installation, service and maintenance costs. Hence, until now floating offshore wind has not been a profitable nor competitive alternative in the energy mix.
