Geospatial assessment of future floating offshore wind challenges: UK case study exploring drag anchor suitability and requirements

Abstract

The majority of the UK’s future offshore wind (OW) will be located in deeper water (>60m) where the turbines will be on floating platforms, secured by mooring systems. The UK’s government’s net zero targets and energy security strategy require rapid deployment of new offshore wind capacity, at approximately ten times the rate of the past 5 years. This rapid growth, alongside the change to floating wind, presents many challenges, including the need for a new supply chain. This paper reports a geospatial analysis that explores the distribution of future offshore wind development around the UK sea regions and examines the implications for the mooring system market and supply chain. This analysis illustrates how geospatial analysis can be used to apply aspects of offshore wind design at a regional scale, providing associated market and supply chain forecasts, as well as the needs for research and the opportunities for innovation. This analysis focusses on the installation suitability and concept-level sizing of a common anchor type – the drag embedment anchor – across the UK sea regions. This methodology leads to an estimate of the number and weight of drag anchors and the length and weight of mooring chain needed for the offshore wind growth in each UK region for net zero. This analysis indicates the required major supply chain growth, which could present a bottleneck to meeting net zero.

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Identifiers

ORCID for H. Putuhena: orcid.org/0000-0003-1947-6984

ORCID for D.J. White: orcid.org/0000-0002-2968-582X

ORCID for S.M. Gourvenec: orcid.org/0000-0002-2628-7914

ORCID for F. Sturt: orcid.org/0000-0002-3010-990X

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