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The offshore wind industry has planted tens of thousands of turbines in coastal waters around the world since the early 2000s. That’s a good start, but it’s just a start. New offshore floating wind technology is beginning to hit the market, extending the reach of wind turbines into new territory and providing new opportunities to squeeze fossil energy out of the global economy. US taxpayers can give themselves a group hug for helping, too.
The Floating Wind Turbine Advantage
To date, the global offshore wind industry has focused its much of its attention on turbines located relatively close to shore. One common construction method consists of sitting them on top of pilings, called monopiles, sunk firmly into the seabed. Last year the US Department of Energy counted almost 60 gigawatts of offshore wind capacity globally spread among 292 projects in operation and 11,900 turbines, many of them monopiles.
Popular as they are, fixed-bottom offshore platforms are limited in terms of siting opportunities. Under the current state of affairs, monopiles are best suited for relatively shallow water of 30-60 meters in depth. Going deeper requires larger monopiles that raise new engineering challenges, as well as raising costs.
That puts a serious crimp on opportunities for expanding offshore wind capacity. Wind speeds are more optimal out in deeper waters, farther from shore. Turbines located out in deep water can also avoid aesthetic conflicts with coastal communities, and they have more room to coexist with shipping and other maritime industries that compete for space in an increasingly crowded environment.
Floating wind turbines provide a workaround. They can be constructed in deeper waters because they sit on platforms anchored to the seabed by slim cables. That poses some engineering challenges of its own, but solutions have been percolating up to the surface, with the US being among the stakeholders pushing the technology envelope through taxpayer-funded grants and technical support (see more floating turbine background here).
6.2 Gigawatts’ Worth Of Floating Wind Turbines
In the latest development, earlier this month a group of leading wind developers hooked up to collaborate on a 6.2-gigawatt four-part floating wind project off the coast of the city of Ulsan in Korea.
Bandibuli Energy, a branch of the leading global energy firm Equinor, will contribute 750 megawatts from the forthcoming Bandibuli floating wind array. The location is about 70 kilometers off the coast at a depth of of 150-300 meters.
The Danish firm Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners is contributing the 1.5-gigawatt Haewoori Offshore Wind Project with a target for completion by 2030, followed in 2031 by the 1.125 gigawatt KF Wind project under the umbrella of Spain. The fourth collaborator is Gray Whale Offshore Wind (a joint venture between Total Energies of France and Shell), which is headquartered in the UK. Gray Whale will clock in at 1.5 gigawatts with completion aimed for 2031.
Equinor notes that all four projects are on track so far. The Bandibuli wing of the venture reached the environmental impact assessment milestone in July, followed by the other three projects in August.
US Can Pat Itself On Back For Supporting Global Floating Wind Industry
One of the supply chain stakeholders participating in the project is Principle Power, a California-based floating wind leader with offices around the world. Principle first crossed the CleanTechnica radar back in 2009, when it received a grant from the US Department of Energy to help its WindFloat platform design overcome some sticky engineering challenges.
Additional assistance for the floating platform followed in a regular series, including a leg up from the Energy Department’s ARPA-E office for funding high risk, high reward energy projects in 2020.
Principle Power went on to lend its floating wind platform to projects in Portugal, France, Scotland, and Wales, as well as the Ulsan project, where Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has engaged the company to provide platforms for its Haewoori Offshore Wind 2 and 3 arrays.
In a press statement, Principle Power noted that it will take care of the platform design and mooring systems for the Haewoori arrays. The company’s ongoing partner, Aker Solutions, will take care of other matters, including cables, port services, wind turbine connections, transportation, and installation.
Well, What About The US?
If you’re wondering why Principle Power doesn’t have anything cooking in its home country, that’s a good question. The US offshore wind industry got off to a rocky start in the early 2000s, partly due to local objections, partly due to politics, and partly because offshore lease areas in federal waters were initially under the wing of the US Army Corps of Engineers, which had many other irons in the fire.
Eventually the responsibility for issuing leases was transferred to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management in the Department of the Interior. BOEM finally began issuing leases in earnest during the Trump administration. Not much in terms of actual construction happened during those years, but the lease activity did set up the Biden administration to declare a goal of 30 gigawatts for offshore wind by 2030.
The first leases were concentrated along parts of the Atlantic coast, where relatively shallow waters permit fixed-bottom construction. More recently, attention has finally turned to the Gulf of Maine and the Pacific coast, where floating wind turbines will come into play.
The Biden administration has already set a goal of 15 gigawatts of floating wind by 2035. Don’t be surprised if Principle Power crops up in those plans. The company is already participating in the Energy Department’s FLOWIN competition, aimed kicking the supply chain for floating wind turbines in the US into high gear, as soon as the new leases are awarded and reviewed.
Maybe…Maybe Not!
In May of this year, the Energy Department selected Principle Power and Aker for a Phase 2 award under the program. The award came with a cash prize of $450,000 cash prize and $100,000 worth of technical assistance to help the team navigate Phase 3, which will focus on fine tuning the WindFloat manufacturing system and readying seaport systems, among other matters.
The FLOWIN competition has already has a ripple effect on the floating wind supply chain. Principle and Aker entered the competition as team called the FloatHOME consortium, and they have already been hooking up with both large and small fabricators and suppliers here in the US.
“This collaborative approach has enabled the consortium to build and evaluate various scenarios for serial production and assembly of WindFloat® foundations to support the vision of using purpose-built facilities to produce subcomponent modules and efficient assembly within American ports,” Principle Power explains.
That point about the domestic supply chain is a critical one. With Inauguration Day coming up on January 21, the whole US offshore wind industry faces the possibility of tough times over the next four years. However, as the trade organization Oceantic Network points out, the domestic offshore wind supply chain already reaches far beyond the coastal states that host offshore wind farms.
Oceantic counts 39 states hosting offshore supply chain operations so far, helping to make a compelling bipartisan economic case for the offshore wind industry. That number will likely swell as a result of new requirements for floating wind technology… if state and federal energy policy encourages the new industry to grow, that is. Here’s hoping.
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Photo (cropped): US taxpayers can pat themselves on the back for supporting new floating wind technology that expands the reach of offshore wind farms into deep waters all around the world (courtesy of Principle Power).
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