Research projects
- Research area
Push the Frontiers of Offshore Wind Technology
- Institution
Loughborough University
- Research project
Performance of offshore floating wind farms
- Lead supervisor
- PhD Student
- Supervisory Team
Dr Sarah Dunnett (Lecturer - Loughborough University Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering)
Professor Lisa Jackson (Professor, Head of the Department - Loughborough University Department of Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering)
Project Description:
This Research Project is part of the Aura CDT’s Innovations in Offshore Floating Wind Energy Systems Cluster.
Wind energy is one of the main electricity production technologies, accounting for approximately 10% of electricity production capacity globally with much of this coming from offshore wind farms. To facilitate decarbonisation, the UK Government’s recent Energy Security Strategy increased the target for offshore wind capacity to 50GW with up to 5GW coming from floating offshore wind. The latter enables the generation of renewable energy in new regions around the world due to the fact that floating wind can be installed in much deeper water than seabed-fixed turbines. However floating offshore wind technology is still in its infancy with only 73MW operational installed capacity globally as of 2020.
To facilitate decarbonisation, the UK Government’s recent Energy Security Strategy increased the target for offshore wind capacity to 50GW with up to 5GW coming from floating offshore wind. The latter enables the generation of renewable energy in new regions around the world due to the fact that floating wind can be installed in much deeper water than seabed-fixed turbines.
Given the relative infancy of floating wind turbines, understanding the risks to operation and the failure characteristics is of paramount importance to maximise availability of power production. Also, being in deeper waters further from shore than current turbines, maintenance processes are more complex. Hence the aim of this project is to develop models of floating offshore turbines which will incorporate the details of the turbines structure and the complexities of its operation and maintenance giving an accurate prediction of turbine availability and degradation over time.
