Analysis of loads applied on floating wind turbines shared anchors

Abstract

As the floating offshore wind market grows rapidly, new issues are emerging. One of the main ones being the decrease of the levelized cost of energy. To achieve this goal, the MUTANC (MUTualised ANChors for offshore wind farms) project intends to study the feasibility of shared anchors in a wind farm as well as its impact on the capital expenditure and the levelized cost of energy. Indeed, until now, floating offshore wind industry has focused on demonstrators with as many anchors as mooring lines. The next step is to develop commercial farms using up to 100 turbines. As highlighted in some studies, anchor sharing could reduce the mooring system cost by up to 16% for a large amount of turbines. However, several aspects of the shared anchor concept are still to be investigated. One of them is the analysis of loads applied on floating wind turbine shared anchor. This article presents inter comparison of methods to be used to derive shared anchor loading. In depth analysis of the cyclic and multi-directional loading applied for shared anchor configuration is carried out. An extensive metocean screening is performed in this study allowing the identification of the mechanisms in stake for shared anchor.