DNV GL Seeks to Standardize Floating Turbines

Despite the fact that the wind industry has a strong focus on the development of floating offshore wind turbines, it is still missing a widely recognised and unified approach for the practical methods to build and validate the numerical models, in accordance with the requirements in the standards. 

 

Standardisation is a key milestone to guide the industry towards the development of reliable floating wind turbines. Guidance includes setting up minimum requirements for the design on new concepts that can help investors’ evaluation, and supporting the more mature technologies towards a safe and secure commercialisation.

 

The project is the first of its kind, bringing together multiple stakeholders from the wind, oil & gas and maritime industries, making it the most interdisciplinary project that engages in the technical advancement for floating offshore wind projects to date.

 

The participants come from a broad range of industries, including utilities, component manufacturing, engineering consultants, maritime research institutes, shipyards and academic research. 

 

The following companies are contributing to the development of the new Recommended Practice:  Ramboll, Ideol, EDF, MARIN, STX Solutions Europe, Esteyco, NAUTILUS Floating Solutions, Dr. Techn. Olav Olsen, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), GICON, Glosten, Atkins and MARINTEK

 

Floating wind turbine specialist Denis Matha from Ramboll commented on the engineering consultancy’s participation in this project: “Ramboll supports this joint industry project and will contribute to this effort by providing our knowledge and experience in the design and analysis of floating wind turbines, covering coupled simulation as well as our structural, mooring and cable expertise."

 

Denis adds:" We expect that this project will provide an excellent platform to jointly develop a Recommended Practice by addressing the key issues and bringing together the expertise of key stakeholders.”

 

Ideol’s CEO Paul de la Guérivière said: “We are happy to join this JIP and share our years of experience coupling multiple wind turbines with our patented floater. We have been convinced for a long time of the benefits of a common framework for the loads analysis of floating wind turbines and are confident that such efforts will lead to substantial gains in efficiency and cost. The Recommended Practice should strongly help the floating offshore wind industry and accelerate the development of commercial-scale floating wind farms.”

 

The new Recommended Practice will build on the experience from the application of the Offshore Standard DNV-OS-J103 “Design of Floating Wind Turbine Structures“ which was published in 2013 and will contain methods and ways to fulfil the requirements set in DNV-OS-J103.