Carbon Trust in £20M hunt for offshore turbine foundations

The UK's Carbon Trust announced a £20 million prize to encourage engineers across the globe to help commercialize sturdier and cheaper foundations for offshore wind farms.

In addition to the Carbon Trust, the competition is also being funded by five wind energy developers: Denmark's Dong Energy, Ireland-based Airtricity, Germany's RWE nPower, Scotland's ScottishPower Renewables, and StatoilHydro in Norway. 

The foundation can account for 20 percent of the cost of an offshore turbine, but the goal of the competition is to cut the cost of each foundation by 30 percent. The UK plans to develop its next generation of offshore turbines in even deeper waters, so sturdier foundation technology is also needed, said the Carbon Trust, an independent company set up and funded by the UK government.

While Denmark installed the world's first offshore wind farm in 1991, the UK overtook Denmark in October as the world's No. 1 country for wind farms built offshore, with 597 MW fully constructed (see 4 top EU wind developers join forces for 25 GW project).

At the end of 2008, Denmark and the UK accounted for about 1 GW of offshore wind, or 80 percent of Europe's market, according to the European Wind Energy Association (see Walney wind farm gets UK approval and U.K. unveils clean energy plan).

The six firms said last year they planned to spend £30 million over five years on an initiative called the Offshore Wind Accelerator. The initiative is aiming to cut the costs of offshore wind energy by 10 percent or more through a combination of wind farm cost reductions and performance improvements (see Cutting the cost of offshore wind).

The current competition is designed for engineers, academics and research institutes, with each finalist set to receive £100,000 to test the product's viability. The winning design is then expected to receive a multi-million pound prize to build a pilot project.

The competition runs from May 11 to June 15.

The Carbon Trust said the solution could lie with floating platforms, a technique being commercialized by Seattle, Wash.-based Principle Power (see EDP, Principle Power partner on deep-water offshore wind).

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