Page 20: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (May/Jun 2024)

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MARKETS FLOATING WIND

To achieve the forecast, commercial scale projects will exceed the capabilities of the world’s largest deepwater need to commence offshore mooring and array cable pre- anchor handlers. Given that today’s feet of large anchor lay operations three-to-four years before fnal commission- handlers was not designed with foating wind in mind, ing. Currently there are concerns that the supply chain it is not surprising that many are not the optimal tool cannot cope with the quantities required. for foating wind. Chain sizes can be reduced, but that

A commercial scale foating wind farm will generally be results in the need for more mooring lines which accen- anything larger than 500 MW and likely be ~1 GW. At a tuates the problem of vessel shortages.

high-level, we can say that the 1 GW foating wind farm

A Fleet is Needed to Built Floating Wind Farms will have a similar order of magnitude capital expenditure to an FPSO. The pre-lay of moorings and array cables and Projects in planning will need large anchor handlers the towing of the turbines will leverage skills developed in and subsea vessels to pre-install moorings and array the offshore oil & gas industry. cables and hook-up up the turbines, which have been

The table establishes that the global quantities of towed by large anchor handlers supported by smaller mooring lines, anchors and array cables are signifcant. anchor handlers.

The quantity is not the only challenge for the existing Flexibility will drive foating offshore wind construction installation feet of anchor handlers and subsea vessels, vessel utilization. Vessels will need to accommodate a vari- but also the physical size of the components. The size of ety of anchor types, chain, fber rope and steel wire moor- the mooring components is also generally larger than that ing lines, and tensioning operations. seen in the oil and gas industry. In fact, project planning Apart from one large vessel suitable to support foating is calling for mooring chain sizes that challenge and even wind projects that was delivered in China last year, there

Source: Intelatus Global Partners 20 OFFSHORE ENGINEER OEDIGITAL.COM