Assessment of offshore wind energy potential in the Middle East: Case studies Egypt, Arabian Peninsula

Abstract

Offshore wind energy is highlighted as one of the most important resources to be exploited for electrical power production. This is due to the higher wind speed availability and minimal visual impacts compared with onshore wind energy sites. Currently, there is a lack of clear systematic assessment methodology for offshore wind energy potential. A methodology is proposed here addressing this gap and providing global applicability for offshore wind energy exploitation. It is based on the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and pairwise comparison methods linked to site spatial assessment in a Geographical Information System (GIS). The method is applied to Egypt and then extended to the Arabian Peninsula countries. In 2014, Egypt had plans to scale renewable energy capacity from 1 GW to 7.5 GW by 2020, which was likely to be through solar, onshore wind, and offshore wind energies. Hence, this work will contribute to the proposed Egyptian target and provide seminal outcomes to quantify the offshore wind energy potential and its contribution to the Arabian Peninsula’s countries renewable energy ambitions. The applicability of spatial analysis based on multi-criteria decision analysis was introduced to provide accurate estimates of the offshore wind energy from suitable locations in Egypt where in-depth further analysis of these sites where also carried out. Three suitable high wind areas around the Red Sea in Egypt were identified with minimum restrictions that can provide around 33 GW of installed wind power capacity. The results for Arabian Peninsula countries indicate that by installing 35GW of offshore wind capacity, 25.7 of their electrical demands can be met. Suitability maps are also included providing a blueprint for the development of wind farms at these sites. Sensitivity analyses was undertaken for the Egypt case study to support the robustness of the proposed methodology assumptions and data quality. An economic analysis of sites, defined as the Representative Cost Ratio RCR approach was undertaken was validated using UK site data. The overall results presented for both case studies indicate that the proposed methodology is applicable for local and regional scales. The developed methodology is generalised and is applicable globally to produce offshore wind energy suitability maps for appropriate offshore wind farm locations. The second phase of this research is to provide full wind farm turbine layout and piling design of the sites in Egypt. This included the choice of the appropriate foundations and farm (array) planning for the chosen sites. From a review and analysis of the different available foundation technologies and their suitability in terms soil conditions and of available infrastructure needed for deployment, it was found that a monopile foundation system is most appropriate for the sites. The final monopile dimensions are with 8 cm wall thickness, 6 m diameter, and insertion depth of either 20 m or 24 m. This size will support a 5 MW offshore wind turbine for the identified soil types of the three different proposed locations in Egypt. The final analysis undertaken covers overall cost reductions for the Egyptian sites through optimising the farm layout. This included a study of the port feasibility and environmental impacts of deploying offshore wind turbines in these locations. The layout optimisation designs showed that the optimum layout has a spacing of five times the turbine rotor diameter in both directions. The port feasibility analysis showed that “Distance between port and wind farm location” was the highest weighting factor. In addition, (East Port Said port) is highly recommended to install the first 500MW offshore farm in Egypt for three different locations, predominantly due to proximity to farm site. Finally, the environmental investigation confirmed that deploying offshore wind farms in Egypt is predicted to have minimum impacts on the surrounding ecosystems and other minor impacts are easily mitigated with proper measures

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Identifiers

ORCID for Mostafa Youness Mosad Mahdy: orcid.org/0000-0003-2006-870X

ORCID for Abubakr Bahaj: orcid.org/0000-0002-0043-6045

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