Illawarra offshore floating wind turbines – are we there yet?

SPANISH offshore wind developer BlueFloat Energy has announced its “preferred” location for the 105 turbines around 14km off the Illawarra coast between Clifton and Shellharbour.

After considering a number of sites, BlueFloat says the preferred site for the floating wind turbines has been chosen due to a strong and consistent wind resource and its proximity to an existing industrial base at Port Kembla.

The company says the project will create significant local economic benefits for the region with thousands of local jobs required during construction and hundreds in ongoing operations and maintenance. However, questions have been raised after one the biggest global players in the field, Siemens Gamesa, posted nearly a billion dollar net loss in just one quarter earlier this year. This has apparently been due to floating offshore wind turbine component and associated warranty issues.

North Illawarra local and former Wollongong City councillor, Kerrie Anne Christian, a metallurgist who spent nearly 40 years in heavy industry working on equipment problems, including turbines, raises a number of questions over the Illawarra wind farm proposal. 

_{By Kerrie Anne Christian}

At the outset, I am very concerned for our climate change and global warming situation. We do need breakthroughs to decarbonise our world.  But I believe that issues, such as those facing Siemens Gamesa and their floating offshore wind turbines, need to be sorted out, before we could be fully confident about facilities.

The main focus of many Illawarra people’s objections seems to be the visual impacts of offshore floating wind farms. Well, the wind farms are composed of about 100 individual turbines, of about 300 metres height above the water line and about 14 kms offshore at least.  Apparently they would be 1.5 kms apart in an array, and so possibly extending around 30kms -40kms along our Illawarra coastline. That would be an awful lot of our  Illawarra coastline between Shellharbour and Coalcliff?  Does that matter, and will the assessment of visual impacts be just done from the perspective of the immediate coastline? Or will it also include impact from the lower escarpment foothills, and from vantage points on top of the escarpment such as Panorama House? Objections like these happen around the world, and around Australia.

Federal and State Governments in Australia are committed to installing floating offshore wind turbines  in order to get our carbon emissions down to fight climate change and global warming. There is a reasonable chance that objections on the grounds of visual impact are not going to carry much weight with the decision makers.

But why in the Illawarra? Obviously, the availability of nearby port facilities at Port Kembla, with the heavy industry base and the associated industries are just too compelling a proposition to ignore. However if we are going to have offshore floating wind turbines in the Illawarra, we need  the issues to be thoroughly and deeply vetted,  and issues well beyond the hype about visual impacts. We don’t need another situation like with the offshore wave generator.

Floating offshore wind turbines have a bigger capacity because they can go deeper and further offshore, to harness the bigger wind velocities out there. However the technology for the floating units is much newer than for  the fixed offshore wind turbines with fixed foundations.  And with my professional background in turbine equipment failure and reliability issues in heavy industry, I ‘ve wondered what might be the issues in the emerging floating offshore wind turbine field.

It does seem that financial aspects have been a big issue – with all the costs in design, assessment, approvals, supply chains for component sourcing, fabrication, construct, towing, installation, operate, maintain and ultimately decommissioning. Many of the facilities overseas have required government subsidies to make the financials stack up.  Though it is claimed that won’t happen in Australia. There are also concerns that some contractors overseas are trying to shave costs by cutting corners in some areas – detrimental for reliability and equipment service lives. And of course there is the recent Siemens Gamesa turbine financial situation.

It should never be overlooked that floating offshore turbines have to work in the extremely harsh offshore environment of wind, wave and salt. These environments can possibly generate chemical, erosion and engineering fatigue impacts, and that’s just the mechanical/structural side of things. Other aspects are electrical, eg in the generating parts. Will salt get in there and cause corrosion? Of course these issues have been faced in the offshore oil rigs for decades. Though,at least access is more feasible on the offshore rigs. But access is not necessarily the same for a floating offshore wind turbine. If something does go wrong, you can’t bring in a crane, or cherrypicker on the ground alongside for access to go up, have a look and fix, like an onshore wind tower. Floating offshore turbines have to be disconnected, towed back in to the maintenance facility at the port. So obviously proximity to Port Kembla would help. Then once the repairs are done, the turbine has to be towed back out offshore etc. All of that chews up lots of dollars!

When equipment failures do occur, and inevitably it seems that they do with offshore floating wind turbines, then it’s best if they can be predicted. That way,  planned maintenance can take place to avoid “breakdowns” and loss of power supply. So there are Maintenance Management and Condition Monitoring programmes used in on-shore fossil fired power stations and in aeroplane jet engines to address this. That’s always much easier to do on the ground. Obviously offshore floating turbines are also going to need a lot of monitoring. Drones have been used to spot issues visually, but not all problems may be visible and accessible to drones.

Other electrical considerations, including transmitting the electrical power to the grid near Tallawarra Power Station, are an issue – including the generating side and also the electrical cables. There’s been a huge focus on electrical cables to carry the power  – to improve capacity and reliability, especially with the turbines going further offshore, than the “more traditional” offshore fixed foundation wind turbines. So the “same old same old” type of electrical cables might not be always suitable.

Where would be the cables located and installed? Would there be any damage to marine organisms, plants and even wrecks where people dive?  In some parts of the world, fishing near the facilities and cables is outright banned and in other areas discouraged. Would this occur here? It’s certainly aggravated fisherfolk overseas.

Other big issues include bird strike/deaths and marine wildlife impacts eg with migrating whales, or cables’ electromagnetic  effects on marine life. In Europe some of these turbines are being painted in dark colours or with stripes, so the birds can see them. In the Netherlands they are even reducing offshore wind tower operations during the bird migratory season – but how does that work for meeting power supply needs? Coastal shipping navigation interaction issues are being raised, as well as yachting/sailing impacts with the Sydney to Hobart Yacht race. Are there  impacts any or not?

I don’t want to see our coastline and environment further compromised for a technology that is not yet fully sorted by even some of the biggest global players. I believe that the equipment and warranty issues plaguing Siemens Gamesa and Vestas need to be fixed to give us confidence. And maybe by then, they will be able to go even further offshore, and so have less complaints about visual impacts?

So are we there yet with the promises of Floating Offshore Wind Turbine energy? We may be on the way, but there’s still significant issues that can’t be ignored.

^{Reference: Reuters}

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