Details
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1348-1360 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | Renewable energy |
| Volume | 145 |
| Early online date | 23 Jun 2019 |
| Publication status | Published - Jan 2020 |
Abstract
Offshore wind energy is a seminal technology to achieve the goals set for renewable energy deployment. However, today's offshore wind energy projects are mostly not yet sufficiently competitive. The optimization of offshore wind turbine substructures with regard to costs and reliability is a promising approach to increase competitiveness. Today, interdisciplinary analyses considering sophisticated engineering models and their complex economic effects are not widespread. Existing approaches are deterministic. This research gap is addressed by combining an aero-elastic wind turbine model with an economic viability model for probabilistic investment analyses. The impact of different monopile designs on the stochastic cost-efficiency of an offshore wind farm is investigated. Monopiles are varied with regard to diameters and wall thicknesses creating designs with increased lifetimes but higher capital expenditures (durable designs) and vice versa (cheaper designs). For each substructure, the aero-elastic wind turbine model yields distributions for the fatigue lifetime and electricity yield and different capital expenditures, which are applied to the economic viability model. For other components, e.g. blades, constant lifetimes and costs are assumed. The results indicate that the gain of increased stochastic lifetimes exceeds the benefit of reduced initial costs, if the overall lifetime is not governed by other turbine components' lifetimes.
Keywords
- Economic viability, Lifetime distribution, Offshore wind energy, Stochastic cost-efficiency, Substructure design
ASJC Scopus subject areas
Sustainable Development Goals
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In: Renewable energy, Vol. 145, 01.2020, p. 1348-1360.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Research › peer review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Influence of structural design variations on economic viability of offshore wind turbines
T2 - An interdisciplinary analysis
AU - Hübler, Clemens
AU - Piel, Jan Hendrik
AU - Stetter, Chris
AU - Gebhardt, Cristian G.
AU - Breitner, Michael H.
AU - Rolfes, Raimund
N1 - Funding Information: We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the European Commission (research project IRP Wind, funded from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement number 609795 ) that enabled this work.
PY - 2020/1
Y1 - 2020/1
N2 - Offshore wind energy is a seminal technology to achieve the goals set for renewable energy deployment. However, today's offshore wind energy projects are mostly not yet sufficiently competitive. The optimization of offshore wind turbine substructures with regard to costs and reliability is a promising approach to increase competitiveness. Today, interdisciplinary analyses considering sophisticated engineering models and their complex economic effects are not widespread. Existing approaches are deterministic. This research gap is addressed by combining an aero-elastic wind turbine model with an economic viability model for probabilistic investment analyses. The impact of different monopile designs on the stochastic cost-efficiency of an offshore wind farm is investigated. Monopiles are varied with regard to diameters and wall thicknesses creating designs with increased lifetimes but higher capital expenditures (durable designs) and vice versa (cheaper designs). For each substructure, the aero-elastic wind turbine model yields distributions for the fatigue lifetime and electricity yield and different capital expenditures, which are applied to the economic viability model. For other components, e.g. blades, constant lifetimes and costs are assumed. The results indicate that the gain of increased stochastic lifetimes exceeds the benefit of reduced initial costs, if the overall lifetime is not governed by other turbine components' lifetimes.
AB - Offshore wind energy is a seminal technology to achieve the goals set for renewable energy deployment. However, today's offshore wind energy projects are mostly not yet sufficiently competitive. The optimization of offshore wind turbine substructures with regard to costs and reliability is a promising approach to increase competitiveness. Today, interdisciplinary analyses considering sophisticated engineering models and their complex economic effects are not widespread. Existing approaches are deterministic. This research gap is addressed by combining an aero-elastic wind turbine model with an economic viability model for probabilistic investment analyses. The impact of different monopile designs on the stochastic cost-efficiency of an offshore wind farm is investigated. Monopiles are varied with regard to diameters and wall thicknesses creating designs with increased lifetimes but higher capital expenditures (durable designs) and vice versa (cheaper designs). For each substructure, the aero-elastic wind turbine model yields distributions for the fatigue lifetime and electricity yield and different capital expenditures, which are applied to the economic viability model. For other components, e.g. blades, constant lifetimes and costs are assumed. The results indicate that the gain of increased stochastic lifetimes exceeds the benefit of reduced initial costs, if the overall lifetime is not governed by other turbine components' lifetimes.
KW - Economic viability
KW - Lifetime distribution
KW - Offshore wind energy
KW - Stochastic cost-efficiency
KW - Substructure design
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85067969134&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.renene.2019.06.113
DO - 10.1016/j.renene.2019.06.113
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85067969134
VL - 145
SP - 1348
EP - 1360
JO - Renewable energy
JF - Renewable energy
SN - 0960-1481
ER -