Page 34: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Mar/Apr 2026)

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MARKETS FLOATING WIND cally for foating wind. Turbine size will drive the size of Facility size and throughput is an issue, with foating array cable to be used, which we anticipate being pre- offshore wind installation campaigns calling for 20-30 dominantly installed by large MSVs. foaters delivered per year.

• What str ucture to deploy: There are over 100 foat- • What per manent mooring system to deploy: Water er concepts, loosely grouped as semi-subs, barges, spars depth and soil type are the frst factors to consider. A and TLPs. All four concepts have been demonstrated large concentration of operational and planned foating with semi-submersibles being the most popular. Struc- wind farms is in =140m of water, although the future tures can be built from steel (plate structures suited to U.S. Pacifc and western Mediterranean sites are expect- shipyards or tubular structures suited to bottom-fxed ed to see much deeper water. wind monopile factories) or concrete. Large waterfront Conventional catenary, buoyant semi-taut and taut sites, such as those used to build large offshore oil & mooring systems featuring combinations of chain gas structures, are needed to construct or assemble and fber rope are forecast to be deployed at scale in these huge structures. Deepwater quays and ultra large foating wind, and to a lesser extent some single point cranes are required for mating the turbine to the foat- mooring systems. ing structure and wet storage is needed to marshal as- Assuming a three-point mooring system, redundan- sembled turbines featuring 220-300m diameter rotors. cy calculations generally offer three choices: (1) a 3 x 34 OFFSHORE ENGINEER OEDIGITAL.COM