Fabricated Tension-Leg Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Platforms

Floating offshore wind is not only considerably more expensive to install than other forms of clean energy, but the rate of manufacturing is considerably slower, and the supply chain, specifically for the floating bases, remains undeveloped in the US. For wind turbines, increasing size increases efficiency and cost competitiveness, so there is a constant drive to install larger turbines, which leads to the need for larger offshore wind floating bases. The welding required to complete these structures is not only the largest cost component, but also the most significant driver of the manufacturing schedule – and current production is dominated by lower cost, lower quality, foreign manufacturers. This research aims to develop technology that could reduce the time and cost of welding these structures that would not only make floating offshore wind more competitive, but also enable a more rapid deployment by decreasing weld time by an order of magnitude. Technological advances that have already been used in other areas, but that have not yet been used in FOW manufacturing, can be utilized to greatly increase rates of production, reduce cost, and improve the quality of American-manufactured platforms. Phase I of this research will develop a robotic welding system that optimizes the fabrication of the large tubular steel components needed to manufacture floating offshore wind platforms, develop cutting-edge manufacturing techniques to improve the costcompetitiveness of scaling this design, reduce the fabrication timeline and cost to allow for this critical infrastructure to be manufactured in the US, and improve the quality and reliability of the manufactured products. This will improve American energy independence, mitigate ongoing global supply-chain disruptions, enable faster implementation of floating offshore wind projects, help constrain the high cost of offshore wind development, and provide hundreds of high-skill, high-demand, family-wage manufacturing jobs to underserved urban and coastal communities. Establishing the technical merit and feasibility of the robotic welding system, and projected advantages for manufacturing floating offshore wind platforms based on the automation software and procedures that will be developed in Phase I, will lay the foundation for Phase II extended research and prototyping, and for Phase III commercialization and mass production.