Innosea authors study on shared anchors and moorings in floating wind farms

Innosea has authored a new paper on shared anchors and mooring lines for floating wind turbine farms, following insights heard at the EERA DeepWind 2023 conference in Trondheim, Norway.

The paper, titled “Design and costs benefits of shared anchors and shared mooring lines of floating wind turbines at farm level” is published online in the Journal of Physics. Our Maxime Chemineau, Florian Castillo, Valentin Arramounet, Jean-Christophe Gilloteaux and Longitude Engineering‘s Lucas Mechinaud, each contributed to the research, which focuses on innovative mooring layouts using shared anchors and shared mooring lines.

Three studies with the ActiveFloat semi-submersible floater supporting a 15MW wind turbine are presented in the paper: two for shared anchors layouts, and one for shared mooring layout, at different sites (Morro Bay and Gran Canaria) and using different types of mooring configuration and line materials.

The authors also performed time domain simulations in ULS using Orcaflex models.

The results show that shared anchor layouts are technically feasible but do not improve the mooring system procurement costs due to the spacing constraint between each turbine. Sharing mooring lines at farm level seems more promising and could help reduce costs, due to the decrease in amount of material use.

This research is funded by the Horizon H2020 project Corewind, grant number 815083. The project focuses on cost reduction of floating wind technology through research and optimization of the mooring and anchoring systems, dynamic cables, as well as the improvement of installation, operation and maintenance activities.

Access the paper to read the full insights, free via the link below