Guide to Offshore Wind Structures
Challenges and opportunities in designing and developing offshore wind structures both now and in the future
Introduction
As an industry we need to ramp up our efforts, fast. By 2030, it's estimated there will be 238 GW of power being generated by Offshore Wind Farms (OWFs) around the world. This is short of the hoped-for 380 GW that the Global Offshore Wind Alliance set in 2022, and reaching 238 GW requires offshore wind capacity to almost triple in the next 4 years.
What is required of the industry in the subsequent 20 years is even more ambitious. The Global Offshore Wind Alliance (GOWA) of wind energy organisations has pledged to work towards deploying 2,000 GW of offshore wind capacity to help the world reach net-zero targets by 20504. As an industry, the pressure is on, and as engineers - working in design or project execution - we need to contribute to meeting the financial, technical and logistical challenges.
Fixed-bottom foundations
Typically, if you're developing an offshore wind farm in 2026 and considering fixed-bottom foundations, you're choosing between a monopile, jacket or gravity base structure. Options you may have considered 10 or 15 years ago – such as tripods and twisted jackets – have for the most part been discarded as being too expensive or too technically demanding. The conditions of the seabed (geotechnical conditions) play a critical role in determining what type of foundation is feasible, and its design parameters.
Engineering and manufacturing
