Page 45: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (August 2022)

OFFSHORE WIND

The Hywind

Pilot in 2009

Photo courtesy Statoil (Equinor) dal, the topology or design of the substructure isn’t important. “What’s important is that you have a ? oater that can be manu- factured large scale,” he says. With that 80,000 MW/year goal, scale is the target, especially for countries where’s there’s not shallow water acreage to build on, such as California, as well as Japan and Korea, where the shelf is limited. But it will also grow in areas such as the US east coast, as developers move into deeper waters.

Stiesdal thinks turbine manufacturers can keep up with the growth rates targeted. “In Bonus, we grew 40% a year from 1989 to 2001 and that was very demanding. But we did it and there’s not much difference.” He also thinks there’s enough global steel production to meet an annual 80 GW/year build out. Copper could be a challenge for subsea cables, but alu- minium could be used and there’s plenty of it, he says.

Growth markets

So there’s a lot to play for. While today’s projects are rela- tively small pilot scale projects, it looks like it’s not going to be long before this industry gains some momentum. Sties- dal expects ? oating wind to start getting big in the 2030s, al- though still not anywhere near volume of bottom ? xed. Then, by the 2040s, it could come into its own and maybe even start to nip at ? xed bottom volumes. “But predictions about the fu- ture are notoriously dif? cult,” Henrik cautions. Stiesdal’s own growth plan has many projects, with signi? cant numbers of

GW to be built before 2030, he says. Watch this space (global governments and planning systems willing!).

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