The UK offshore industry faces one of its biggest challenges as reliability and turbine size plays an important role in the success of the 2020 targets. The new mega offshore turbine from Vestas will play a vital role in the program’s success.
One of the biggest challenges facing the offshore industry is the ability to offer reliable turbine performance and larger turbines - keeping the life cycle infrastructure cost down. But to which extent does size play a role in the 2020 targets.
A right direction of travel
With a natural interest in de-risking and accelerating the program for offshore wind, Supply Chain Manager Adrian Fox from The Crown Estate points out:
“It is great to see that Vestas has now introduced this larger turbine. Having these larger machines is important to create that capacity for the Round 3.”
How will larger turbines influence the success of Round 3?
“The larger the machine, the lower the potential infrastructure cost. This is why we have an interest in seeing more larger turbines such as the one Vestas has introduced to the market. However, there is also a downside to having larger turbines. If they go offline we expect a bigger loss of wind production prorate to smaller machines, so the risk increases when compared with smaller turbines which do not harvest the same capacity. Therefore, we do need to keep a strong focus on the reliability as this will also keep the costs down in the complete life cycle as well as reducing hazardous working offshore” He says.
Why not stick with smaller turbines then?
“With 3MW turbines we would have to put far more out there before 2020 and this aspect combined with the potential for a lower cost of energy in larger machines creates a natural interest in mega turbines.“
Going beyond the turbine
Going beyond the turbine is an interest related to Adrian Fox’s occupation as he is in constant search for turbine suppliers having a strong focus on cost of energy in the total life cycle of the offshore wind power plant.
“It is fantastic to see Vestas going beyond the product and also looking at the infrastructure, because this increases total reliability. Essentially, the offshore technology is a new platform and consequently, we focus on reliability in the life cycle as this influences other important areas such as safety i.e. less physical intervention minimizes the risk of safety hazards and also maintains a low Lost Production Factor*. For The Crown Estate, it is important to reduce the life cycle cost, so we are looking at lower operations and maintenance in what currently is, in effect, a subsidized industry. Based on my experience with Vestas I expect to experience a world class product brought quickly to the market due to the state of the art facilities in the R&D Centre such as the virtual nacelle and its access to previous platform designs which deal actively with the lessons learned” concludes Adrian Fox.
*Lost Production Factor = 100% - Yield %
