Context

In Europe, around 80% of the offshore wind resource is located in waters of more than 60 meters depth. This corresponds to sites with larger water depths where floating offshore wind turbines are considered to be technologies that can satisfy the environmental constraints and ensure a competitive levelised cost of energy. After the development of demonstrators and the deployment of small farms, the next step for floating wind will be commercial farms, using 20 to 100 turbines, leading to a reflexion on the mooring systems to be used for such projects. Mutualised anchors can reduce the mooring system cost by up to 16% in a wind farm of 100 turbines. However, their potential to reduce the levelised cost of energy still need to be studied in details.

Objective

To study the potential of mutualised anchor to reduce the leve-lised cost of energy of floating offshore wind farms

Scientific and technical content

• Mooring system design and shared anchor load analysis
• Geotechnical modelling with 3D finite element numerical method
• Centrifuge tests on small-scale models to study multidirectional loadings and cyclic loadings
• Cost estimation of mooring systems through experts consultation and exis-ting cost models

Ressources

MUTANC project sheet (PDF)

Partners and funding

This project is led by France Energies Marines, Technip Energies and Saipem.

The total project budget is €1,343K.

This project receives funding from France Energies Marines and its members and partners, as well as French State funding managed by the National Research Agency under the France 2030 investment plan. The project also has the financial support of WEAMEC, Pays de la Loire region, Nantes Métropole and Pôle Mer Bretagne Atlantique.