According to marine and engineering consultancy, LOC Renewables, out of 96 European ports analysed, only a limited number of them in Scotland, Norway and Spain are able to operate floating offshore wind farms.
Most of European ports are not able to enable manufacturing and assembly works for large-scale floating wind farms. Today, the biggest floating wind farm has a total capacity of 30MW and has just five turbines.
[smlsubform prepend=”GET THE SAFETY4SEA IN YOUR INBOX!” showname=false emailtxt=”” emailholder=”Enter your email address” showsubmit=true submittxt=”Submit” jsthanks=false thankyou=”Thank you for subscribing to our mailing list”]
These results came from a LOC Renewables’ research for a floating wind joint industry report published on behalf of the Carbon Trust. The results of the study will be presented at the WindEurope 2018 conference in Hamburg.
In order to accommodate offshore wind farms, ports need to have a large onshore area for component set-down and production lines. An area for wet storage of assembled parts is also required, while they should also be near other operation-capable ports.
Current installation and support vessels will probable prove insufficient, the company said, while new ones will need to be further developed to meet the demands of floating offshore projects.
The world’s largest operational floating wind farm is Equinor’s 30MW Hywind project, located off Scotland.
