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Purpose The assessment of the economic feasibility of floating offshore wind farms (FOWFs) plays an important role in the future possible spreading of this challenging technology in the wind power industry. The use of specific economic analyses is fundamental to point out the potential of FOWFs and to sustain their technical value. Within this topic, the implementation of the FOWF life cycle cost model and producibility analysis in a geographic information system is developed, with the aim of carrying out a feasibility analysis at the territorial scale, for different types of floater. Moreover, a simplified model for a quick life cycle cost assessment is proposed and calibrated. Methods The available cost model is first validated comparing the costs of FOWFs based on different floaters (Semi-Submersible Platform—SSP, Spar Buoy—SB and Tension Leg Platform—TLP) with corresponding results available in the literature. Then, it is implemented in QGIS to be used for territorial-scale analyses and sensitivity analyses of the cost parameters. A feasibility analysis is developed through the main financial parameters. Finally, the results are then used to calibrate a simplified version of the cost model that depends on three main parameters, namely distance to shore, distance from the port of operation and bathymetry. Results and discussion The FOWF cost values are found to be in good agreement with those coming from analytical methods similar to the one from the authors. However, some discrepancies with those based on average costs are observed. Then, the results of the sensitivity analysis are presented as life cycle cost maps, giving an overall picture of the variation of the total cost of FOWF installations on a reference domain. The results show that among the three types of floaters considered here, the SSP proved to be the most promising one, giving lower costs than the SB and the TLP. Moreover, a good agreement between the results in terms of total cost of FOWFs calculated with the analytical and simplified models for SSPs, SBs and TLPs is observed. Finally, the feasibility analysis showed that the financial parameters are more influenced by the wind speed than by the cost of the farm. Conclusions The paper aims to provide guidance on how to carry out feasibility analyses of a specific site for FOWF installation, thus supporting decision-making procedures. The approach and the results presented here are meant for use in the early stage of the decision-making process, as a tool for the assessment of the economic feasibility of FOWFs installation.

Floating offshore wind farms represent the next frontier in wind power industry. However, the development of this technology is strongly dependent on its economic feasibility. There follows that the development of economic analyses is crucial to highlight the possible greater potential of floating offshore wind farms and to support their sustainability and technical value. In this context, the purpose of this paper is to present a sensitivity analysis of the main cost parameters for floating offshore wind farms, namely the distance from the coast, the distance from the closest port and the sea depth. It can give specific information on which parameters are more important, and how much they affect the total cost. To this aim, a comprehensive life cycle cost assessment of floating offshore wind farms has been developed. In this study the cost model has been applied to the Italian waters. The results shown should provide guidance on how to preliminary assess the quality of a given site for floating offshore wind farm installation, and should be helpful for future development of decision-making procedures in the offshore wind sector.