In order to support faster progress in the offshore floating wind industry, key players are developing a common design standard. The conclusions from this joint industry project will provide best practices on principles and technical requirements and guidance for design, construction and in-service inspection work.
Although the offshore floating wind industry is still in its infancy, there is a significant potential in the vast deep-water areas around the world. The bottom-fixed offshore wind industry is already booming but the deep waters around Japan, China, Southern Europe and the USA remains huge untapped resources for offshore floating wind energy.
Challenges
“However, floating wind turbines introduce new risks and technological challenges related to stability, station keeping, power transmission and structural strength. In addition, economic aspects are likely to be challenging in the early phases. One barrier to the growth and development of this industry has been the lack of a design standard,” explains Johan Sandberg, the business development leader for wind at DNV.
“Having developed standards for the maritime and energy industries for decades, DNV has experienced that cooperation to create unified rules results in faster industrial progress. The development work is carried out in a joint industry project (JIP) where best practices are shared among the various players in the value chain. The result is a common framework which supports the fast-moving development of specific technology and business, and which is especially valuable to emerging industries,” he states.
Design Standard
Due to the expected growth in offshore floating wind turbines, there is a need for a fully fledged design standard. Based on this and requests from the industry, DNV has therefore initiated a JIP with the aim of developing one common global standard covering all aspects of the design process, including:
– safety philosophy
– loads and load effects
– materials
– capacity
– characteristic values
– code formats
– structural design
– floating stability
– mooring
Source: https://www.dnv.com/press_area/press_releases/2010/dnvdevelopingnewoffshorestandardforfloatingwindturbinestructures.asp[DNV]
