The UK has ambitious plans to ramp up from 1GW to 33GW of offshore wind power within five years

For the UK, offshore wind presents a tidy solution to several nagging issues.

It is the country’s trump card for meeting its EU 2020 renewable energy target. But not just that: it also promises to deliver the UK from the black hole of energy dependency, kick-start the green economy, and restore Britain’s standing as an industrial, engineering and maritime nation.

The UK has already positioned itself as a world leader in offshore wind, with a total of 11 farms already online. But the sobering reality is that today, only 2% of the country’s electricity comes from renewable resources, according to the Digest of UK Energy Statistics. Of this, offshore wind accounts for a trifling 878MW.

If the UK is to realise its vision of 33GW of wind power by 2020, there is work to be done. Most of the next generation (the so-called Round 3) of the UK’s offshore wind farms will only emerge from the “consenting phase” around 2015, narrowing the construction timeframe to five years.

To meet its objective, the UK needs to galvanise a supply chain. This requires developing the right skills (of which there is an acute shortage), and building super ports that can accommodate quayside manufacturing facilities for 750 tonne components, and quayside turbine assembly.

This will need considerable investment. To this end, UK government has already pledged £60m for the upgrade of port facilities in the hope of stoking interest among the investment community.

In general, soaring costs across the supply chain need to come down by up to 40% in order for offshore wind to be viable, according to Gordon Brown, the prime minister who oversaw the ambitious plans. However, as Ian Johnson, senior project manager for E.ON’s Robin Rigg wind farm, project points out, “turbine prices have tended to follow the subsidies”.

And there are only seven ships currently capable of installing offshore turbines. According to Kaj Lindvig, chief sales officer at turbine installation company A2Sea, 25 installation vessels will be required by 2015. With a construction lead-time of three to five years, investment to the tune of £2.5bn is required, now.

Intermittent power

Given the intermittent nature of wind energy, a North Sea “super grid” would resolve balancing issues. But the requisite network of cables and substations that feed offshore wind energy back into the grid will require massive investment and coherent planning, which, the industry says, should involve linking the UK’s offshore grid to Europe.

Mainstream Renewables chief executive Eddie O’Conner says: “Round 3 can’t happen without a supergrid. But the technology isn’t the stumbling block; it is the political will to do it.”

Finally, the turbine suppliers, which have suffered countless setbacks involving component failures over recent years, will need to churn out roughly 7,000 offshore turbines within five years. For suppliers, the pace of the UK’s permitting and approval process has been glacial. Fortunately, the UK’s Infrastructure Planning Commission, designed to fast track infrastructure planning applications within a year, is now open for business.

Industry is not asleep either. Earlier this year Clipper Windpower and Mitsubishi Power Systems announced separate decisions to establish a turbine blade manufacturing plant and a £100m turbine R&D facility in the UK.

Seimens and GE have announced multi-million-dollar investments in turbine manufacturing facilities, and Spanish wind turbine manufacturer Gamesa is also said to be considering opening a UK wind turbine manufacturing facility in coming months.

Alone, the UK is unlikely to realise its offshore wind ambitions by 2020. Rather it will be achieved via European collaboration and a global supply chain – and plenty of sheer determination.



Related Reads

comments powered by Disqus