Offshore wind energy: Technology opportunities and challenges

Abstract

The global Offshore Wind Energy (OWE) industry is rapidly growing as the offshore wind resource has huge potential and is advantageous in many countries with the technology solutions becoming more cost-competitive. OWE simultaneously helps the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, an increase in energy security and diversity, creates jobs, and promotes sustainable development. Various enterprise opportunities and jobs will be created from the development of the supply chain, surveying and assessment of resource and environment and from maritime ports and logistics. These opportunities have been themselves challenges for the OWE industry. A number of measures to overcome those challenges are discussed in this paper. Offshore wind resources, marine ecology and seabed habitats urgently need to be surveyed and assessed at nationwide scales in order to plan zones for windfarm development, ecological conservation and maritime logistics. Advanced tools including LIDAR, coupled atmosphere-ocean models, surface heat flux models among others, and the use of Marine Spatial Planning and the study of the existing frameworks in other countries are recommended. Identifying the larger contribution areas of the supply chain and their bottlenecking challenges, detail costs breakdown, and the use of integrated and coupled models for analysis and design and control measures can effectively enable cost reduction. The supply chain and projects should be designed for the different offshore environment. Operational policies and technologies and energy storage can mitigate the dispatch-down of wind energy. A multi-contracting strategy is suggested for large utilities and the EPCI contracting for the independent or less experienced developers.