LEAF: Spanish leadership for the advancement of floating wind energy

In the LEAF project, the companies ESTEYCO, SAITEC, NAUTILUS, X1- WIND and ENEROCEAN, specialised in the design of floating structures, and the engineering company COREMARINE, specialised in the marine field, are joining forces in the common mission to reduce the costs of electricity generation from floating offshore wind power for deep sea locations. LEAF has identified the following issues associated with the technology as critical to achieving the market reliability and cost requirements for its designs.

(1) Addressing the need for high-fidelity tools to capture the complex physical phenomena of floating wind turbines and their interactions. These tools should improve the representation of effects such as rotor wake interactions, multi-rotor platforms, viscous and non-linear effects of hydrodynamics, couplings of multibody models with hydrodynamics and aerodynamics, and dynamic effects of mooring systems.

(2) Control strategies for onshore wind turbines should be adapted to floating offshore conditions. This is a challenge, as the presence of the platform adds degrees of freedom (platform translations and rotations) that can compromise the stability of the overall system. In addition, the natural frequencies associated with these degrees of freedom are low, which poses a technological challenge for the development of control algorithms.

(3) Platform and mooring system designs are needed for cost-effective transport to the site and installation, without the need to mobilise large ships or cranes.

(4) There is a need to reduce the maintenance costs of floating systems in operation. Of particular importance is the preventive maintenance of anchoring systems, which are difficult to access and whose failure can be critical.