Context

Worldwide, floating offshore wind farms are seen as one of the best candidates for reaching the renewable energy targets by getting a better resource farther offshore, with more intense and stable winds, and limiting interaction with other activities, thus improving acceptability. The offshore electrical subtations of the first commercial farms in France will be installed on piles, although the depths will be greater than for conventional bottom-fixed farms. The next calls for tender will be farther offshore and therefore will be economically not viable with bottom-fixed technologies. So it is critical in the near future to accelerate the development of offshore substations, in particular with in-service health monitoring aof the electrical and structural lecomponents (including mooring) in order to optimise the costs associated with the operation and maintenance phases.

Objectives

To develop and demonstrate a comprehensive methodology for in-service electrical and structural health monitoring (including mooring) of floating offshore substations with currently available solutions and identify challenges for future technologies.

Scientific and technical content

• Return of experience review and definition of specific needs related to floating offshore substations
• Development of a maintenance optimisation approach: identification of the risks for floating offshore substations, identification of degradation processes and development of simplified models, definition of the system reliability accounting for in-service electrical and structural health monitoring
• Specification of the in-service electrical and structural health monitoring: performance, redundancy

Resources

MOSISS project sheet (PDF)

Partners and funding

This project is led by Université de Nantes and France Energies Marines.

The total project budget is €892K.

This project receives funding form France Energies Marines and its members and partners, as well as French State funding managed by the French National Research Agency under the France 2030 investment plan.

Photo credit: Atlantique Offshore Energy