12 MW Floating Wind Turbine

Bankability: unmatched reliability (intrinsic tendon redundancy)

Client:

General Electric Company (GE)
Collaborators:

GE Research

US Department of Energy

ARPA-E
Project Type:

Offshore Structures
Service Categories:

Naval Architecture

Marine Engineering

Ocean Engineering
Challenge:

Optimize a deep water floating platform for GE’s 12 MW turbine.

COST-EFFECTIVE OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY.

The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) estimates that floating offshore wind turbines (FOWTs) have the ability to dramatically expand the energy production of US offshore wind resources to nearly double the US total annual energy consumption. The key to actualizing this potential is to make FOWTs economically viable. ARPA-E, the US Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy, aims to address current technical barriers and explore radically new FOWT design concepts to make economical offshore wind power a reality.

CONTROL
CO-DESIGN.

Glosten and our project partner, GE Research, bring decades of experience in all technical areas involved in making deep water wind farms a reality, including turbine controls, structures, aero engineering, naval architecture, and hydrodynamics.

With funding from ARPA-E’s ATLANTIS program, our project team has taken on the challenge of designing a lightweight FOWT structure for GE’s Haliade-X 12 MW turbine that has up to 35% less mass in the platform and tower. Less mass means less material and consequently a less expensive unit. This results in a significant reduction of the overall cost of the electricity generated and helps make deep-water offshore wind a practical option for greatly expanding clean energy production.

FOWT optimization requires co-designing an advanced turbine control system along with the tower, floating platform, and actuated tendons. Glosten is working to generate multiple PelaStar platform concept optimized to the turbine and expected offshore conditions. Simulations in critical extreme condition and fatigue-driven load cases will confirm that the selected design achieves the project’s goals.

This is the cooperation needed to bring floating wind to technical and commercial success.”

– BEN ACKERS, Glosten Vice President and PelaStar Managing Director