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OFFSHORE WIND FLOATING WIND t u C Const tru uction i s and installa- ti tion of Stiesdal’s p r T TetraSp par r Demo w in No orw way.

involved in producing lots of foundations and marshalling for construction and installation and we’ve also got operations and maintenance activities and major component repairs that need to be undertaken, that’s going to be a con? ict for deep- water port access.”

A large question mark also remains over how O&M will be done. Currently the consensus is to tow units back to shore, but it’s not clear if this is a long-term solution. “One of the big things that is still missing in the puzzle is the good way of doing large component replacement or maintenance of large compo- nents on ? oating wind farms. The ones that can come up with the good solutions for that, there’s an enormous market there.”

Could that be a completely new vessel concept? Some think so, but others also think that technology will come into play that enables O&M offshore, including access solutions.

Despite the many questions that still remain, there’s de? nite momentum in this sector. Many are con? dent the industry will see the cost reduction it needs to get it on par with ? xed bottom offshore wind. The World Bank, for example, has said ? oating “is likely to be cost competitive” with ? xed bottom offshore wind by the mid-2030s. Indeed, Noonan says, “Cost reduction is expected to happen even faster for ? oating than it did for bottom ? xed and we expect scale and innovation could take us to subsidy free projects by the early 2030s.” Margulis points to

US National Renewable Energy Laboratory predictions that put costs at $53-64/MWh by 2032. “The cat is out of the bag here and there’s no letting it back in,” Lanard says. Expect to hear much more about ? oating offshore wind in the future.

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