Many are looking to Offshore as a more beneficial environment to harvest larger volumes of wind energy. Offshore wind farms are developed with ‘bottom fixed’ structures in relatively shallow, near shore waters.
As 80% of the best wind resources lie in waters beyond the reach of bottom fixed (~60m), floating wind technology is increasingly accepted as ‘the future’ of offshore wind.
Turbine capacity has more than doubled in a matter of years and accommodates the philosophy of ‘the bigger the turbine, the better’. Developers are moving into large scale commercial projects where the economies of scale and serial production of floating units will bring down cost.
If an Offshore Wind Farm of 10 turbines or 100MW is considered commercial, it is anticipated that currently planned Wind Farms of 100 floating units and more will offer even better project economics.
The long-held argument that Floating Wind is too expensive will no longer stand if a large-scale project returns more power revenues than a comparable sized bottom fixed.
Floating Wind and Bottom Fixed can be complimentary and projects may very well see the combination of both, in the near future.
The just released report GLOBAL FLOATING WIND ENERGY MARKET & FORECAST(2019 – 2031) illustrates how super-sized Floating Wind Projects now have a Total Addressable Market (TAM) in excess of $62 Billion.
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