Posters

Abstract

This work aims to model a floating offshore wind turbine in its entirety and examine the behaviour resulting from a wide spectrum of sea and wind states describing a specific site near Carloforte, in view of a future installation of a wind farm. Two different substructures are considered: the Spar Buoy, a tested and consolidated technology in HyWind Scotland, and the QuadriMore, a new concept made of four cylinders and a central counterweight developed by Politecnico di Torino. The sizing of both structures is carried out following the typical environmental conditions of the Mediterranean Sea and in particular to ensure adequate stability, as defined by the Standards, as well as to maximize productivity and reduce costs. The dynamic behaviour of both platforms and their performances are analyzed using an in-house Aero-Hydrodynamic Model for a floating offshore wind turbine, developed using Matlab and Simulink software. The results obtained using the in-house built code are then compared with Orcaflex, a commercial software that internally computes hydrodynamics and mooring system dynamics while, regarding the aerodynamic of the wind turbine, refers to OpenFast as an external library. The Carloforte case study is considered for the investigation with the resource data extracted from the ECMWF ERA5 database. The most occurrent and energetic triads of wind and wave conditions are selected for the techno-economic analysis of the device. Finally, a wind farm is defined in the area, to meet the island’s electricity needs. A sensitivity analysis to estimate the Levelized Cost Of Energy is presented, analyzing the parameters that influence it most, like Capacity Factor, Weighted Average Capital Cost (WACC), the number of wind turbines and presenting possible cost reductions in the coming years.