Skip to main content
OSTI.GOVU.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information
 

Scenario analysis for techno-economic model development of U.S. offshore wind support structures

Journal Article · · Wind Energy
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1002/we.2021· OSTI ID:1348156
 [1];  [2];  [1];  [1];  [1]
  1. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
  2. Brigham Young Univ., Provo, UT (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations
Challenging bathymetry and soil conditions of future US offshore wind power plants might promote the use of multimember, fixed-bottom structures (or 'jackets') in place of monopiles. Support structures affect costs associated with the balance of system and operation and maintenance. Understanding the link between these costs and the main environmental design drivers is crucial in the quest for a lower levelized cost of energy, and it is the main rationale for this work. Actual cost and engineering data are still scarce; hence, we evaluated a simplified engineering approach to tie key site and turbine parameters (e.g. water depth, wave height, tower-head mass, hub height and generator rating) to the overall support weight. A jacket-and-tower sizing tool, part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's system engineering software suite, was utilized to achieve mass-optimized support structures for 81 different configurations. This tool set provides preliminary sizing of all jacket components. Results showed reasonable agreement with the available industry data, and that the jacket mass is mainly driven by water depth, but hub height and tower-head mass become more influential at greater turbine ratings. A larger sensitivity of the structural mass to wave height and target eigenfrequency was observed for the deepest water conditions (>40 m). Thus, techno-economic analyses using this model should be based on accurate estimates of actual metocean conditions and turbine parameters especially for deep waters. Finally, the relationships derived from this study will inform National Renewable Energy Laboratory's offshore balance of system cost model, and they will be used to evaluate the impact of changes in technology on offshore wind lower levelized cost of energy.
Research Organization:
NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Golden, CO (United States))
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE; USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Wind and Water Technologies Office (EE-4W)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC36-08GO28308
OSTI ID:
1348156
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1400795
Report Number(s):
NREL/JA--5000-66252
Journal Information:
Wind Energy, Journal Name: Wind Energy Journal Issue: 4 Vol. 20; ISSN 1095-4244
Publisher:
WileyCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

References (17)

Offshore Wind Energy Cost Modeling: Installation and Decommissioning book January 2012
ADS Experiments for the Effectiveness of External Source book January 2012
A Direct Search Optimization Method That Models the Objective and Constraint Functions by Linear Interpolation book January 1994
Ocean Environment book January 2005
Multi-criteria assessment of offshore wind turbine support structures journal November 2011
Gust Response Factor Methodology for Wind Turbine Tower Assemblies journal January 2007
Simulation-based optimization of lattice support structures for offshore wind energy converters with the simultaneous perturbation algorithm journal December 2014
Comparison of different approaches to load calculation for the OWEC Quattropod jacket support structure journal December 2014
Design Drivers for Offshore Wind Turbine Jacket Support Structures
  • Cordle, Andrew; McCann, Graeme; de Vries, Wybren
  • ASME 2011 30th International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering, Volume 5: Ocean Space Utilization; Ocean Renewable Energy https://doi.org/10.1115/OMAE2011-49338
conference October 2011
SNOPT: An SQP Algorithm for Large-Scale Constrained Optimization journal January 2005
2013 Cost of Wind Energy Review report February 2015
Wind Vision: A New Era for Wind Power in the United States report March 2015
JacketSE: An Offshore Wind Turbine Jacket Sizing Tool; Theory Manual and Sample Usage with Preliminary Validation report February 2016
Sensitivity Analysis of Wind Plant Performance to Key Turbine Design Parameters: A Systems Engineering Approach conference January 2014
Energy From Offshore Wind conference April 2013
A Jacket Sizing Tool for Offshore Wind Turbines Within the Systems Engineering Initiative conference May 2013
Aseismic pile foundation design analysis journal March 1993

Cited By (5)

Conceptual jacket design by structural optimization journal September 2018
Structural optimization with several discrete design variables per part by outer approximation journal April 2018
A systematic approach to offshore wind turbine jacket predesign and optimization: geometry, cost, and surrogate structural code check models other January 2018
A Systematic Approach to Offshore Wind Turbine Jacket Pre-Design and Optimization: Geometry, Cost, and Surrogate Structural Code Check Models posted_content May 2018
A systematic approach to offshore wind turbine jacket predesign and optimization: geometry, cost, and surrogate structural code check models journal January 2018

Similar Records

Related Subjects

17 WIND ENERGY
balance of system
cost analysis
jacket substructure
mass sensitivity to environmental variables
offshore wind