{"id":25183,"date":"2022-09-05T09:14:00","date_gmt":"2022-09-05T08:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/?p=25183"},"modified":"2022-12-21T08:09:57","modified_gmt":"2022-12-21T08:09:57","slug":"w2power-offshore-wind-deployment-worldwide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.innovationnewsnetwork.com\/w2power-offshore-wind-deployment-worldwide\/25183\/","title":{"rendered":"W2Power: Achieving successful offshore wind power deployment worldwide"},"content":{"rendered":"
Offshore wind power in recent years has been a success story, adding Gigawatts (GW) of new renewable power capacity each year. Offshore wind farms can access stronger and more stable winds at sea, as well as having less conflict for use of space than on land. The use of bottom-fixed foundations \u2013 mostly steel monopiles piled deep into the seabed \u2013 and wind turbines of ever greater size and power have driven costs to market parity in lead countries such as Denmark, the UK, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and China.<\/p>\n
However, the vast majority of countries worldwide lack large and windy sea areas shallow enough to build offshore wind farms by conventional methods. Neither monopiles nor other fixed foundations have much economic prospect in seas deeper than 40 to 50m, because their need for construction material and, consequently, cost increases proportionately with depth. Spreading the success of offshore wind power beyond shallow waters of the southern North Sea, its adjoining seas, and the East China Sea requires floating solutions. It is unsurprising that floating wind, long seen as a far-future prospect, has entered the mainstream focus of energy business managers, investors and policymakers as important tools for reaching ever-more ambitious decarbonisation goals.<\/p>\n
Floating, therefore, is the key enabler for making offshore wind power generation truly global. But floating will only realise its potential if it is cost-competitive with other renewable technologies. For many countries, this is onshore wind, while for countries that have both shallow and deep seas \u2013 notably France, the US, and China \u2013 the benchmark is likely to be bottom-fixed offshore wind.<\/p>\n
Floating wind power is not a new idea \u2013 serious engineering efforts on designing floating wind technologies go back at least 30 years.1<\/sup> In the mid-2000s, many observers expected floating to blaze a rapid path to market as early designs entered sea trials. However, in the real world, the high cost of prototypes, failed full-size demonstrations such as Japan\u2019s Fukushima FORWARD project, and, above all, the late but definite maturing of bottom-fixed offshore wind farms (whose cost have dropped by more than half since 2015) prevented this from happening.<\/p>\n W2Power is a mature, robust, and cost-efficient floating wind power solution suitable for any offshore sites from 50m to beyond 1000m depth. It has unique technical advantages that offer the prospect of reducing the cost-efficiency of floating to approach or surpass that of conventional offshore wind.<\/p>\n The W2Power floating solution has been in continuous development over more than a decade since its patenting2<\/sup> and subsequent market introduction as a concept,3<\/sup> both in 2009. Owned by Spanish company Enerocean, its lead developer since 2012, the technology has been refined and engineered, advancing systematically up the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) scale. Funded by a string of EU and National R&D projects, it has completed multiple design revisions, wave-tank testing, and component and subsystem improvements which allowed TRL 5 to be reached in June 2015.4<\/sup><\/p>\nW2Power floating wind power solution<\/h3>\n