Ocean wind is steady, less turbulent and has high energy potential. The offshore wind energy sector has been noticed to undergo drastic development in the past few decades to harness this wind energy. To achieve a better offshore wind energy system for efficiently capturing the offshore wind, both the foundations and wind turbines must be studied and designed accurately. It is evident that the wind in the open ocean has more energy; to extract this, floating offshore wind energy systems have proved effective.
The present study conducts a preliminary investigation on the performance of a Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) system subjected to a steady wind field in the presence of waves. A time-domain parametric study is conducted to determine the coupled dynamic responses of the SPAR floating platform under regular wave conditions comparing different mooring arrangements. The aero-servo-hydro-elastic tool OpenFAST developed by NREL is employed for the present study. The study further investigates the variation in wind power generation, wave load developing on the platform and the variation in the fairlead tension for the SPAR FOWT. For the considered wind-wave conditions, it is found that the taut mooring arrangement restrains the motions better in surge and pitch. The chosen mooring arrangements have not adversely affected the power generation. Thus, the study also provides insights on the effect of steady wind fields and mooring arrangement on the efficiency of power produced by a floating offshore wind energy system.
Due to the rising environmental concerns related to the consumption of fossil fuels, the clean energy has become an important research and development topic. Energy sources like solar, wind, wave and tidal have become an alternative to the conventional fossil fuels in the last few years. Among these sources, wind power is gaining more attention among the researchers especially the energy from offshore wind (Wu et al., 2019). To support the wind turbines in the open ocean, support structures/ platforms are a much-required component. Such platforms can be classified based on the water depth as fixed (for shallow water) and floating (for deeper depths). The offshore wind from deeper water depths is less turbulent and has higher velocity, but the cost of constructing a fixed platform is not feasible (Sun et al., 2012). A floating platform like SPAR, Tension Leg Platform (TLP) or Semi-submersible platform (SSP) is adopted in deeper oceans to harness offshore wind energy. These platforms are prevented from drifting away using mooring lines.