LIFES 50+: Floating offshore wind for the future

Introduction

The European Horizon2020-funded programme LIFES50+, led by Norway's MARINTEK (and involving Politecnico di Milano, DTU, Ramboll, ORE Catapult, Universität Stuttgart, Iberdrola IEC, Ideol, DNV GL, Tecnalia, Insitut de Recerca en Energia Catalunya and Dr.techn.Olav Olsen), will run for 40 months and will focus on proving the innovative technology that is being developed for floating substructures for 10MW wind turbines at water depths greater than 50m.

The objective of the project is two-fold:
1. Optimize and qualify, to a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 5, two (2) substructure concepts for 10MW turbines.
2. Develop a streamlined and KPI-based methodology for the design and qualification process, focusing on technical, economical, and industrial aspects.


Approach

The consortium partners have chosen to focus on large wind turbines as these are seen as key to reducing the cost of energy generated from offshore renewables. The chosen concepts will be taken from an existing list of four mature candidates (TRL>4) currently supporting turbines in the region of 5MW. An existing reference 10MW wind turbine design will be used throughout the project. The selection of the two concepts will be made based on technical, economic, and industrial criteria. This methodology will be supported by existing numerical tools, and targeted development and experimental work. It is expected that resulting guidelines/recommended practices will facilitate innovation and competition in the industry, reduce risks, and indirectly contribute to a lower levelised cost of energy (LCOE).



Main body of abstract

The objective of this paper is to provide an overall presentation of the H2020 LIFES50+ project, summarizing the objectives and ambitions of the project, as well as the main challenges and research tasks.

The paper will provide an update on the research status of the project.

The first 10 months of the 40 month project are completed. During these months the design basis, design brief and design load conditions have been defined for three selected sites. The site conditions are representative for West of Barra in Scotland, Gulf of Maine in the US, and the Gulf of Fos in France, Marseille area. In parallel, a number of assessment criteria are being defined to be used to compare the four technologies from different points of view: LCOE, technical behavior (KPI), environmental aspects (LCA approach).

There is also ongoing work on developing design procedures and recommendations, industrialization, risk analysis methods, as well as numerical and experimental methods which may be used for optimization and verification of the floating offshore wind technology.


Conclusion

The paper intends to give an overview of the current progress and results from the EU h2020 LIFES50+ project.


Learning objectives
LIFES50+ ambitions are to advance, well beyond the state of the art:
• Substructure design for very large floating offshore wind turbine (10MW)
• Methodologies for design evaluation, including LCOE
• To realize these goals, there is a need to push forward
• Multi-fidelity numerical tools
• Experimental techniques
• Concept industrialization
• Uncertainty and risk assessment
These ambitions are addressed in the paper.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 640741.