Reducing pile size 'key to cheaper offshore wind energy'
DONG Energy has entered into cooperation with an academic consortium of three leading universities to work on an R&D project aimed at reducing the cost of energy from offshore wind turbines.
The academic consortium, led by Oxford University and including Imperial College London and University College Dublin, will investigate how offshore wind turbine foundations can be designed more effectively in the future.
Project PISA (Pile Soil Analysis) is being carried out by an industry group headed by DONG Energy and involves RWE, Statoil, Statkraft, SSE, Scottish Power and Vattenfall.
PISA is being run under the framework of the Carbon Trust Offshore Wind Accelerator (OWA), a UK government supported organisation established to promote offshore wind energy and reduce the cost of energy.
‘The cost of energy from offshore wind turbines must be reduced,’ said said Bent Christensen, senior vice president in DONG Energy Wind Power. ‘We expect to find significant savings by trimming monopile sizes and finding new ways of installing the foundations, amongst others. Consequently, we believe a significant contribution can come from this area towards our efforts of reducing the price of offshore wind power by 35-40 per cent by 2020.’
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Comment: The UK is closer to deindustrialisation than reindustrialisation
"..have been years in the making" and are embedded in the actors - thus making it difficult for UK industry to move on and develop and apply...