Fourteen companies from the wind, oil & gas and maritime sector led by prominent certification body DNV GL, have launched a joint industry project dubbed Coupled Analysis of Floating Wind Turbines. Its aim is the development of a Recommended Practice for the coupled analysis of the design of floating offshore wind turbines, in order to minimise risks in the development process and cost estimation by aligning current analysis methods and deliver evaluations based on unified methodologies.

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The offshore wind industry still lacks a widely recognised and unified approach for practical methods to build and validate the numerical models in accordance with the requirements in the standards.

Standardisation is a key point from which to guide the industry towards the development of reliable floating wind turbines. Guidance includes setting up minimum requirements for the design on new concepts that can help investors’ evaluation, and supporting the mature technologies towards commercialisation.

The project is the first of its kind, and is the most interdisciplinary project for the technical advancement of floating wind projects to date. The participants, Ramboll, Ideol, EDF, MARIN, STX Solutions

Europe, Esteyco, NAUTILUS Floating Solutions, Dr. Techn. Olav Olsen, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), GICON, Glosten, Atkins and MARINTEK, will construct the new guide by building on experience gained from the application of the Offshore Standard DNV-OS-J103 Design of Floating Wind Turbine Structures, published in 2013. The new publication will contain methods for fulfilling the requirements set out in DNV-OS-J103.

Since its publication, DNV-OS-J103 has been used in the design of floating WTG structures. In 2013 the available practical experience in the field of floating offshore wind energy was rather limited in the areas of reliable information on validating numerical models for the turbine construction, and reliable insights into the level of complexity required at each individual project stage, but over the last three years, the industry has moved the commercialisation of the new technology forward with the launch of first floating wind farm demonstration projects. The joint approach is expected to greatly reduce the risk of inadequate analysis, while advantages will stem from the focus on the design of floating WTGs and the validation and certification of numerical models.