By Sarah McFarlane
Off the east coast of Scotland, in water more than 300 feet
deep, five towering turbines weighing thousands of tons float in
the North Sea. Installed in 2017, the turbines power about 36,000
homes a year.
Wind farms have been erected on land and at sea for decades, but
Hywind Scotland, operated by Norwegian oil giant Equinor ASA, is
the first to float. Instead of being inserted into steel tubes
buried in the seabed, the turbines sit in cylindrical buoys that
are fixed to the seabed by mooring lines. The approach promises to
enable wind farms in much deeper water, where there are often
stronger winds, opening up swaths of untapped coastline to
renewable energy.
Equinor believes that there are many countries where floating
wind could be the best option for generating renewable power. In
some places, such as Japan, South Korea and the U.S., a steep drop
off the continental shelf means the water is too deep for fixed
wind turbines, which are limited to depths of around 60 meters, or
just under 200 feet.
The technology is gaining interest as governments scramble to
reduce their carbon emissions footprint. The 2015 Paris climate
accord, where governments agreed to limit global temperature
increases to less than 2 degrees Celsius, with an ambition to cap
them at 1.5 degrees Celsius, has focused attention on limiting
emissions, which renewable energy helps address.
Still, floating wind is almost double the cost of fixed offshore
wind, which needs an average price of $84 per megawatt-hour of
electricity for projects to break even, according to industry group
the Global Wind Energy Council. There are dozens of concepts for
floating platforms in the works, preventing the savings that come
with standardization and mass production. Longer cables needed to
send power back to land can also increase expenses. The internal
rate of return, a measure of profitability of investments, is
around 10% for fixed wind and not yet known for floating wind.
Another limitation is the slow pace at which governments are
developing policy to enable projects.
"We will start with where you see an appetite from government
and where you see an energy need that cannot be met by obvious,
much cheaper options like onshore wind, solar and to some degree
fixed offshore wind, " says Sebastian Bringsværd, head of floating
wind development at Equinor.
Some governments are realizing that floating wind may be their
only option for meeting carbon reduction targets, particularly if
they have limited space for solar and wind projects onshore, Mr.
Bringsværd says. Whether fixed or floating, wind farms in the sea
don't face as much public resistance over their impact on the
environment and landscape. They are not visible from shore when
they are farther than 30 miles out. Cables can be buried all the
way to the power station, but this can be more difficult if the
cable lands ashore in a residential area.
Some oil-and-gas companies seeking to expand in renewable energy
see floating wind as a natural extension of their expertise, having
spent years building floating oil and gas facilities to extract
fossil fuels from deep beneath the seabed.
Energy giants including France's Total SE and Royal Dutch Shell
PLC have invested, consistent with their plans to reduce dependence
on oil and ramp up spending on low-carbon energy. Shell bought
Paris-based floating wind specialist Eolfi SA in 2019. Utilities
already active in wind energy are also testing floating
technologies, including Spain's Iberdrola SA and Germany's RWE
Group. Both companies are involved in single-turbine pilot projects
due to start up in Europe in the next two years.
There are plenty of opportunities to pursue. Countries including
Japan, South Korea, the U.K., Spain and some states in the U.S. are
planning for floating wind projects off their shorelines. Some
regions are setting offshore wind targets, including the European
Union, which aims for capacity to grow fivefold to 60 gigawatts by
2030. Some of this will need to come from floating wind, according
to Equinor.
"The low hanging fruit of fixed-bottom wind has been picked,"
says Bruno Geschier, chief sales and marketing officer at France's
Ideol SA, which designs and builds floating foundations for
turbines. The company's technology has been used in France and
Japan since 2018 in single-turbine pilot projects.
President Biden's move to return the U.S. to the Paris agreement
and plans to boost green energy investment have also spurred
optimism in floating wind.
"The willingness of governments to make sites available is key,
that has been one of the restrictions of the development of the
U.S. market," says Joao Metelo, chief executive of California-based
Principle Power Inc., which designs and makes floating
platforms.
The company has developed a three-column semi-submersible
platform which helps distribute the weight of the turbine and
stabilize it. The company is considering future projects including
at water depths of over 3,000 feet. In 2018, California's Redwood
Coast Energy Authority selected a consortium including Principle
Power, Norwegian oil-services company Aker Solutions AS, and the
renewables unit of Portugal's largest utility Energias de Portugal
SA, to enter into a public-private partnership for a proposed
floating wind project.
The wind blows harder and more consistently farther from shore,
which means that floating offshore wind projects have the potential
to generate more power than fixed-wind projects. In 2019 Equinor's
Hywind Scotland project achieved 55% of its potential power
capacity. This compares with fixed offshore wind projects which
average 29% to 52%, while solar photovoltaic is less than half of
that, according to the International Energy Agency.
"Around 60-80% of the best wind resources near centers for
demand are in areas where the water is deeper than 60 meters," says
Ideol's Mr. Geschier.
A handful of commercial scale floating wind farms are expected
to start up by 2025, including in Spain, Italy and South Korea,
according to GWEC.
One of those is Hywind Tampen, an Equinor project off the coast
of Norway to power some of the company's offshore oil and gas
platforms from next year. Equinor is using technology where the
floating cylindrical buoy the wind turbine sits in is weighted so
that the entire construction floats upright.
Later this year, governments are expected to auction areas for
seabed development, and floating-wind proposals are likely off the
coasts of France, South Korea, Norway and elsewhere, due to the
water depth.
As project size increases, costs are expected to fall.
Henrik Stiesdal, chair of GWEC's floating offshore wind task
force, expects that within the next decade floating-wind costs are
likely to match fixed-wind turbines, aided by the same subsidy
schemes which helped cut costs for fixed turbines.
"The main thing that will make floating wind reduce in price and
really cost competitive is volume," says Mr. Stiesdal.
Write to Sarah McFarlane at sarah.mcfarlane@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 06, 2021 10:16 ET (15:16 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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