Type: Briefing sheet

Far from shore floating wind farms and associated emerging technologies

Date: 01 November 2019

This briefing sheet is a review of the technologies emerging from far from shore floating wind farms.

Far from shore floating wind farms and associated emerging technologies — What are the emerging technologies associated with far from shore floating wind farms?

The article looks at far from shore wind farms, and the opportunities to generate hydrogen from wind at locations far from shore. The cost of electrical cables to shore are significant and this mitigates against the location of wind farms a long distance from the coast.

An alternative is to generate hydrogen using wind turbines, probably floating, and using offshore platforms similar to those constructed for oil and gas production to act as a hub for the facilities to produce hydrogen by electrolysis. The opportunity exists to use the sub-structures of decommissioned installations such as the Brent platforms.

The article examines the options for transport to shore of the hydrogen to take account the end use, which could be high pressure for vehicles or lower pressure for residential and business heating and for back up to the electrical grid. Issues associated with the liquefaction of hydrogen and the use of ammonia as a transport medium are also discussed.