The global offshore wind industry has unchangingly tackled the global pandemic, with investment in the industry growing and manufacturers of offshore wind turbines competing to build a larger turbine. With foreign wind turbines, bigger is better, Rystad recently said.
Wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa announced in May 2020 that it is working on the development of wind turbines with up to 15MW capacity and a 222 meter rotor – the world’s largest in the making. The prototype is expected to be ready in 2021, with turbines to be commercially available somewhere in 2024. The giant Siemens Gamesa turbines have already been ordered – conditionally – for projects in Taiwan and the USA
GE, the company behind the world’s largest wind turbine in operation, Haliade X – the prototype in Rotterdam – which has been running since late 2019 – recently upgraded the same turbine, from 12 MW to 13 MW. The revamped 13MW Haliade-X will continue with 107-meter blades and a 220-meter rotor.
In addition, GE only got a contract a month ago to deliver the refreshed Haliade-X 14 MW wind turbines for the offshore wind farm Dogger Bank C in the United Kingdom. This is the first time these turbines have been installed at any project worldwide.
With the offshore wind turbines getting bigger, the offshore engineering TVs are Greg Trauthwein recently interviewed Philip Lewis, Director of Research, World Energy Reports, author of “Outlook for Offshore Wind Power, the Frontier of Future Energy”, to learn what larger turbines mean for the offshore wind industry and offshore wind installation contractors. In short, larger turbines demand for larger installation machinery and larger vessels.
Lewis said: “We now have a series of projects that need to be installed from the middle of the decade with turbines up to 14MW. The main vessels used to install turbines are wind turbine installation vessels or WTIV. The demand for this is being driven by the number of turbines to be installed and the size of the turbines. “
WER expects more than 77GW of new offshore wind capacity to come into operation from now until 2025, requiring an average of more than 1400 turbines to be installed annually.
But what about the turbine size?
“Turbine sizes developed rapidly […] but what does it actually mean? Well, bigger turbines mean big sprung areas by bigger rotor diameters, ”Lewis explains.
“Larger rotor diameters require higher hubs, on which heavier nacelles sit to convert wind energy to electric power. As wind turbine vessels are installed, it is necessary to create stable platforms for turbine installation and reduce the requirements for the crane range, turbines are needed up to 10MW usually lifts height capacity above deck of more than 90 meters with a capacity of not less than 800 tons.
“If we look at a 12-14MW turbine, minimum lift heights of 120 meters and more than 1200 tons are needed. And the next generation of vessels is designed to lift more than 150 meters above deck and lift more than 1,500 tons,” says he.
Per Lewis, so far more than 115 vessels – excluding support vessels – have been involved in the installation of wind turbines and their monopiles and jackets.
However, these were not the giant turbines of 14 MW + of the future. These turbines require larger vessels, and although there are currently not many vessels that can handle such turbines, the installation of wind is overseas contractors are working on it.
“We only have two WTIV activities that can pick up turbines over 14 MW today or confirm that the upgrades are planned for them. There are a further five in construction and 7 either as options with a garden or in design,” he said. Lewis said.
“At World Energy Reports, we see that the supply side for larger vessel segments for wind turbine installations from 8 vessels today will grow to 28 in the coming year,” he adds.
Where will the growing WTIV fleet be built and deployed? Who will benefit the most from the new construction activity? What is the impact on local content restrictions in some countries, such as Japan and the US? What are some of the largest vessels that have to transport and install the largest offshore wind foundations? Watch the full interview above to get the answers to these questions.