Presentations

Abstract

The offshore wind industry is going through unprecedented challenges. Increased capital costs and constrained supply chain are posing significant threats to the development of new offshore wind farms. Yet, additional capacities are needed fast to meet the world ambitious net-zero goal. In this context, floating solar technologies are believed to be an attractive solution to fast track additional capacities offshore at a reasonable cost. This is especially true when solar technologies are deployed over existing offshore wind farms (so called "hybrid" model): * Accelerated permitting and consenting processes * Better used of the ocean space between the turbines * No or little need for additional site characterization (re-use of already collected data) limiting upfront costs for surveys and accelerating the design * Limited CAPEX for energy transmission (e.g. spare capacity of existing subsea cables can be used, limiting the need for new cables) * Reduced OPEX via synergies (shared costs) for the maintenance of the wind turbines/solar panels * More balanced production profiles due the complementary nature of wind and solar integration While the solar technology is well proven on land (including floating solar on lakes), its application in offshore environments is still not well understood. To address some of the challenges related to the deployment of floating solar technologies at sea, the author's company (Tractebel) and its partners (Jan De Nul and Deme) have started a demonstrator project. The project involves a prototype floater equipped with solar panels (and associated instrumentations) deployed offshore the Belgium coast. The proposed paper/presentation will present some of the key findings from the demonstrator project, highlight technical challenges for the deployment of solar technologies offshore and provide an outlook for the deployment of offshore solar technologies at a commercial scale.