All fixed oil platforms in the Brazilian Northeast are near their design lives presenting low productivity. This scenario will lead to a decision-making process about decommissioning. An alternative use for these platforms could be an interesting option to reduce decommissioning costs and social impact. The Brazilian Northeast is already known for its great wind power potential. In this way, this region shows an interesting possibility of reuse fixed oil platforms under decommissioning process to generate wind power. Moreover, many of these fixed platforms are near the coast, installed in shallow waters, close to a major metropolis with significant energy demand, which could potentially reduce the cost of energy transmission. On the wind power operator side, the use of these structures as wind turbine foundation would also reduce the corresponding construction and installation costs. Thus, decommissioning associated with wind turbine installation could be an attractive opportunity for both operators: wind and oil. The objective of this work is to evaluate the technical feasibility of the reuse of these jacket structures for this new proposal, based on economic information already available. On a first step, the work will involve developing a case study in a Brazilian scenario, based on a qualitative analysis of existing wind farm data in Brazil and worldwide. The second step will be to gather global market tendencies, which will be used to define the offshore turbine requirements and data to be used in the following step. Next, the structural capacity of a representative number of jackets will be evaluated considering the wind turbine characteristics defined in the previous steps. A general evaluation will be performed in order to verify the application of the results obtained to all platforms in the field, which will determine the wind farm configuration. Finally, the Levelised Cost of Electricity (LCOE) will be calculated and compared with worldwide values in order to determine the economic viability of the business. This work intends to verify if it is possible to use existing Brazilian offshore oil fields, composed by fixed platforms, as offshore wind farms. For this purpose, a basic methodology to evaluate the structural capability of these structures will be established, which could be applied in other brown fields around the world in the same life situation. Nowadays there are hundreds of ageing platforms/oil fields to be included into decommissioning processes that could be considered as potential Power Wind Farms. The present study could be used as a first approach to permit start a decision-making process, with the adequate region adjustments.
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