Session: 05-01-01 VLFS and New Concepts for Ocean Space Utilization

Paper Number: 123734

123734 - Evaluation of a Multi-Turbine Floating Platform Concept Considering Turbine Interference 

The floating offshore wind sector currently implements a one-turbine-one-platform strategy in the planning of offshore wind projects. A nominal floating offshore wind farm with 1GW capacity will require more than 60 floating platforms, 200 mooring lines and complex distributed power take-off infrastructure, leading to costly inspection and maintenance. Hence, upscaling the one-turbine-one-platform strategy to GW-scale floating offshore wind array represents a major challenge. A multi-turbine shared platform approach has the potential to reduce this complexity and cost. To space the turbines effectively and reduce turbine interference (wake effect), these structures need to be of unconventional size, i.e., Very Large Floating Structures (VLFS). However, the unprecedented size of VLFS also imposes techno-economic challenges such as demanding structural integrity requirement and significant increase of material cost. In view of this, this paper evaluates the trade-off between the mitigation of wake effect and the cost-effectiveness of platform's structural design. Constrained by structural integrity considerations, a number of two-turbine VLFS designs are compared, in which the Jensen's single wake model is employed to evaluate the impact of turbine interference. Using material cost per output power as a performance indicator, the present results suggest that the material cost of floating platform may outweigh the importance of turbine interference mitigation.

Presenting Author: Shen Li University of Strathclyde

Presenting Author Biography: Shen Li is a Chancellor's fellow (assistant professor) at the Department of Naval Architecture, Ocean and Marine Engineering, University of Strathclyde. His research focuses on limit state analysis of marine structures, in-service monitoring using digital twin technology, risk-based inspection, and structural optimisation.

Authors:

Shen Li University of Strathclyde
Feargal Brennan University of Strathclyde