Making Wind Farms Float

From hydro-international

Offshore sites are seen as the best option for wind farms. Until now offshore wind turbines have had to be firmly rooted on the seabed with large and costly subsea structures. Things are changing, however, with the advent of Statoil's innovative new offshore floating Hywind wind turbine, the first of which is now successfully moored in the North Sea off the Norwegian coast.

The Hywind turbine incorporates Trelleborg's syntactic foam (hollow glass microspheres embedded in a binder) buoyancy technology.

Without the support of properly designed buoyancy the structure would be much less able to resist the extremes of the offshore environment, and the cable that anchors the turbine to the seabed could suffer premature damage.

For Hywind, Trelleborg designed and supplied 45 polymer-coated syntactic foam distributed buoyancy modules (DBMs), which supply buoyancy support for a three-ton, 100-metre section of cable as it exits the turbine spar and descends to the seabed 220 meters below the surface.

The buoyancy modules include an internal clamp for secure fastening and precise positioning on the cable. The cable is supported mid-water in what is known as a "lazy wave" configuration, featuring gentle, long radius curves that minimize stress on the cable while accommodating natural movement created by wind and waves.

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