Design, development and testing of critical components for megawatt-scale, floating, vertical axis wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean (Design4C)

Project Description

The complexity of horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT) leads to an average 8.3 failures per turbine per year offshore, where weather and ocean conditions have a significant impact on operators' ability to access the turbines for repairs. This issue is exasperated with floating turbines as they are deployed further offshore in more extreme environments with less suitable weather windows. The Design4C consortium therefore believes that vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT) on floating offshore platforms can now break back into the sector as a disruptive technology. With increased reliability and reduced CAPEX and OPEX, therefore electricity can be generated at a lower cost to the consumer than a comparable HAWT installation. The project aims to overcome some of the main design barriers to achieving a Megawatt scale offshore floating VAWT. Design4C will design key components of the turbine: blades, struts and the mooring system for a MW VAWT device and manufacture a scale demonstrator which will be structurally tested, to de-risk the design for future use. The project will also design a platform and mooring system suitable to host two VAWTs and be deployed and operated at a site off Ireland's coast.