Wind turbine nacelle systems cost breakdown 

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... field developments. Germanischer Lloyd who has regulations for wind turbines too, is also supervising several Offshore service vessels newbuilding and re-building projects, including self elevating units for wind turbines installation purposes, anchor handlers, cable laying barges and vessels, various supply and maintenance vessels. GL has also been involved in more than 18 wind farm installation and maintenance newbuilding projects. A few interesting cases are the following: • Two self elevating enhanced GustoMSC 9000C vessels were ordered from Fred. Olsen Windcarrier company. The design incorporates important features from in-house experience as well as 160 years of maritime history. Their optimized design custom for the wind industry, providing a wider weather window, will extend the operability, greatly reduce installation time, limit the need for many other vessels and hence reduce overall installation costs [17]. The vessels shall be delivered in May and September 2012 and the contract with the yard includes options for two additional vessels. • The new wind turbine installation vessel of A2SEA will get propulsion and automation equipment from Siemens. The “SEA INSTALLER” will be a jack-up vessel optimized to operate at water depths of up to 45 meters. The vessel is built for operations in tidal areas and difficult soil conditions and will be able to carry eight to ten complete wind turbines at a time. This is significantly more than the capacity of the vessels which are currently available in the market. The Danish power company DONG Energy holds 51 percent of A2SEA and Siemens holds 49 percent. The joint goal is to build ships for the specific demands during the installation of offshore wind parks. • UAE-based MIS Group, a diversified engineering and contracting group focused on the energy sector, has signed a contract with Polish shipbuilding yard CRIST S.A. The contract, valued at 22.5 million $, entails the fabrication of four Friede & Goldman (F&G) legs for the wind turbine installation heavy lift jack-up crane vessel, Rig NB 142, for end user BELUGA HOCHTIEF Offshore, a joint venture of German companies. • The Spanish turbine manufacturer Gamesa and the US group Grumman Shipbuilding, the country's largest shipbuilder agreed in 2010 to cooperate in the field of offshore technology. • Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., the world’s second-largest shipyard, aims to generate 30 percent of its sales from wind power by 2020 [19]. There is an increasing interest worldwide in the use of renewable energy sources at sea. In many parts of the world, including Greece, the possibilities for energy production from renewable sources offshore are much greater than the ones onshore. In fact, as we move away from shore in order to build offshore wind farms at larger depths, we are able to exploit even larger amounts of wind energy. This is depicted in the figures 5,6 , which show that offshore US wind energy is comparable to the total energy consumption. In the United Kingdom offshore wind energy potential is several times larger than its energy consumption. Shipbuilding core competence is to keep large complex ships and marine structures operating at peak performance throughout their life in harsh marine environments, and that’s also a target with offshore renewables. As well as both industries working in hostile ocean environments, the understanding of large structures, too, is a crucial skill that can be transferred from shipbuilding. On the other hand wind turbine manufactures believe similarities shouldn’t be exaggerated and further skills and training is also necessary. Location also provides a significant advantage for shipbuilders and repairers in the renewables market. Shipyards are suitably placed for the construction of offshore renewable technologies. They also have the space and equipment required for the construction of these large structures. The synergies will increase and become more and more important in the future as larger offshore wind turbines demand custom-built ships for installation. Additionally to special ships and servicing, according to studies at the National Renewable Energy Centre, while vessels can travel easily from one port to another after construction, transporting turbines is much more costly, so it’s important to consider manufacturing them closer to where they’ll be deployed. Therefore moving towards fabrication of turbine structures is a wise strategy for shipbuilders, who have the expertise and facilities in manufacturing and handling similar equipment. Local economy can significantly benefit from several operations required for an offshore wind park, as shown in the above table [3]. Local activities can account for half of the total project cost, if combined with windturbine tasks like assembly or component manufacturing. Large steel items like the ones shown in figure 7 can be prepared in shipyards. Cost breakdown of windturbine components depicted in figure 8 shows that many parts can be constructed locally and provide valuable work to local economy. The initially planned off shore wind parks in four areas in Greece sum up to around 1500 MW of installed wind turbine capacity. The investment size is around 5 billion €. This can lead even in pessimistic scenarios of 30% local involvement in case of a ten year development period in 200 million € per year in local contractors. Additionally there will be required 2% services after completion of the wind farm, which accounts for 100 million € per year service jobs. This is an important figure for Greek shipyards and ship repair yards [8]. In Germany there are around 300,000 renewable energy jobs, so exploiting natural renewable resources is very important for the future [9]. Wind resource map in figure 9 makes clear that if deeper sea is exploited the energy potential is much higher. Additionally, sea life is most important close to coastline and at depths less than 50 meters. Floating structures is the most promising solution [16], which can be installed in many more areas where the wind speed is even higher and in deeper water depths without affecting the environment, nor life at sea. The main drivers for floating technology [12] are: • Access to useful resource areas that are in deep water yet often near shore. • Potential for standard equipment that is relatively independent of water depth and sea bed conditions. • Easier installation and decommissioning. • Environmental and disturbance issues. Regarding the exploitation of wave energy, several shipyards are working on wave energy conversion projects, while the first operating systems were installed on the coast; an increasing number system is presented and tested in various seas like the one in figure 10. Unlike other renewable energy sources, the number of ideas and inventions on the conversion of wave energy is very large [13]. Although more than 100 technical wave energy conversion devices have been patented worldwide [11], the majority of this seemingly large number can be categorized in a few different types: • Technology of oscillating water column, which include devices with air chamber. • Technology of elevating water using floating or fixed tanks. • Technology of Vertical Oscillation, which float on the sea surface and are anchored to the seabed • Technology of articulated devices - modular systems, which have pumps in the joints. • Horizontal Technology, which includes systems that perform appropriate compression/ decompression of flexible tubes. Finally, hybrid wind wave systems have been proposed, which clamped on the tower of the wind turbine generate electricity and additionally protect the tower from the waves. Around UK there are expected 30 gigawatts of electricity from offshore wind farms by the end of the next decade, which requires that as many as 8,000 turbines will have to be designed, built and installed off Britain. This is not an easy target. For deep-water wind, traditional mono-piles are not appropriate. The UK Carbon Trust evaluates over 100 proposals for new-design foundations for water depths down to 60 metres - and beyond, because it's going to be very difficult to extrapolate existing seabed technology into deeper water [10]. In order to solve these issues a 30 million £ new technology-development project under the Offshore Wind Accelerator banner has been formed. It is a consortium made up of Denmark’s DONG Energy, Germany’s RWE npower, Norway’s StatoilHydro and the UK’s Airtricity Developments and ScottishPower Renewables and has identified four main technology areas where rapid advances would improve deep-water wind’s economic thresholds. The expected total cost to reach this wind capacity is up to 75 billion £ in capital. Cost reduction by 20% is possible through innovation and mass fabrication. Improvements include offshore substations and inter-array cabling; marine logistics, transport and turbine access; wind-wake modelling for large wind farms; plus foundations and substructures. In UK offshore wind farm Round 3 licensing new technologies for depths of 30 metres of water or more are necessary. Innovative concepts for substructures are required in order to reduce installation and life cycle cost by 30% [7]. The trend is to perform as much operations at shipyards and reduce installation time offshore (figure 11). The innovative Ydriada floating structure wind turbine, with autonomous desalination, had to fulfil controversial requirements in order to achieve stable, not affected by waves and safe operation of all components in open sea [3]. The optimization goals were to minimize movements and loads induced from waves, improve the operation conditions for the wind turbine, and withstand extreme weather conditions [4]. The goals have been achieved and performance analysis in real sea conditions provides valuable knowledge for accurately simulating larger designs [5]. The first floating wind turbine YDRIADA was ...