Great expectations for offshore wind turbines: Emulation of wind farm design to anticipate their value for customers

To date, the technical feasibility of making electricity from offshore wind energy has been convincingly proven. However, the current challenge is to reduce the costs of this form of energy. One of the aspects playing a role in cost reduction is the optimisation of the wind turbine. The wind turbine influences the costs of various elements of an...

Fatigue prediction and response monitoring on a FPSO

The fatigue life of structural members is an important aspect in the hull design of a Floating Production Storage and Offloading unit (FPSO). In contrast to the design for ultimate conditions, a fatigue assessment requires a thorough knowledge of the long-term environment to which the unit is exposed and how the unit is operated to estimate an...

Design of support structures for offshore wind turbines

To meet growing energy demands, the Kyoto protocol and the much desired diversification of supply, wind energy has become a mainstream source of energy in the EU. Cost wise it is already competing with gas fired electricity. In the last decade wind moved offshore to accommodate even more wind power. The offshore wind resource is more abundant...

A reliability based design methodology for extreme responses of offshore wind turbines

Dynamics and design optimisation of offshore wind energy conversion systems