Optimised Planning, Foundation Design and Installation Procedures for Offshore Wind Farms

The state-of-the-art in designing and installing offshore wind farms (OWFs) offers substantial scope for improvement affecting nearly all phases. Achieving such improvements, particularly in efficiency, is our underlying idea for value creation. This is d riven by financial pressure to operate without subsidies, by inefficient technology unsuited to upcoming projects, and by environmental considerations. In short, upcoming projects challenge current OWF practices; herein we propose a new paradigm. In this proposal we outline an R&D plan involving the introduction of innovative elements and equipment to the OWF planning and installation workflow. These innovation elements will improve planning and environmental assessment; widen the range of possible sites for OWFs and provide quicker, cheaper and less environmentally disrupting installation procedures. The Norwegian OWF site Havsul (managed by Vestavind Offshore (VO)) will be utilized as a test bed and case study for this project. Today's OWFs are almost entirely in shallow water (up to 20-30m) with homogeneous sandy sea-bottoms, in which conditions wind turbine positions are chosen to minimize spacing and maximize wind efficiency. The towers sit on the bottom, anchored either as monopiles sunk into the s eafloor, or as heavy concrete pylons or "jacket" lattice-girder towers anchored with long, hammered pilings (Fig. 1). Today's design and installation technologies, developed for shallow water and sandy bottoms, may not besuited for upcoming OWF sites in d eeper water, non-sand bottoms, poor weather, stricter environmental requirements and greater distances offshore.