Floating offshore vertical axis wind turbines: opportunities, challenges and way forward

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

28 Citations (Scopus)
320 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The offshore wind sector is expanding to deep water locations through floating platforms. This poses challenges to horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs) due to the ever growing size of blades and floating support structures. As such, maintaining the structural integrity and reducing the levelised cost of energy (LCoE) of floating HAWTs seems increasingly difficult. An alternative to these challenges could be found in floating offshore vertical axis wind turbines (VAWTs). It is known that VAWTs have certain advantages over HAWTs, and in fact, some small-scale developers have successfully commercialised their onshore prototypes. In contrast, it remains unknown whether VAWTs can offer an advantage for deep water floating offshore wind farms. Therefore, here we present a multi-criteria review of different aspects of VAWTs to address this question. It is found that wind farm power density and reliability could be decisive factors to make VAWTs a feasible alternative for deep water floating arrays. Finally, we propose a way forward based on the findings of this review.
Original languageEnglish
Article number8000
Number of pages29
JournalEnergies
Volume14
Issue number23
Early online date30 Nov 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Nov 2021

Keywords

  • vertical axis wind turbine
  • VAWT
  • floating offshore wind
  • offshore wind

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Floating offshore vertical axis wind turbines: opportunities, challenges and way forward'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this