As offshore wind turbine sizes grow rapidly, the technology needed to install and commission turbines is not following suit. This is a significant barrier to progress in the offshore wind industry and is continuing to make it difficult to reduce the levelised cost of energy.

Today’s wind turbines and the associated installation technology, such as taglines, have been created from the same baseline. But it is all essential just an incremental evolution of technologies that have been moved from onshore to offshore. There have been no significant design revolutions.

At the same time, we are using the same technology developed for smaller turbines and assuming it will deal with 8MW turbines – and bigger. We are increasingly demanding more from the equipment, but in reality the technology has its limits. Continue reading →