Offshore wind energy presents an attractive option that has been implemented with some success, especially in Europe. The sector has witnesses a formidable change to get ahead of renewables energies. It is planned that installed offshore wind energy capacity increases by 330% from now up to 2027, and the latest European offshore wind farm auctions have shown that costs of these projects are nearly 50% lower than in 2015 going down from 132 €/MWh to 63 €/MWh. This represent a serious challenge for wind farm developers that must find cost effective technologies to reduce wind farm costs along the whole life cycle.
The TRIWIND project presented herein is the result of an activity initiated by the company two years ago, which has resulted in a patented technology (ES2617991) for the cost-efficient installation of offshore wind farms, suitable even for the largest turbines (10+ MW). To understand the magnitude of the installations challenges, offshore wind farms are nearly twice as expensive to install as onshore wind (new offshore wind farms cost 2.20-4.40 Mill €/MW).
Hence, the objective of TRIWIND phase 2 is to validate a large-scale prototype of our innovative foundation, so that we can engage several clients and other stakeholders to become the leaders in design of foundations for the offshore wind sector.