A Software for Calculating the Economic Aspects of Floating Offshore Renewable Energies

Abstract

The aim of this work is to develop a software to calculate the economic parameters so as to determine the feasibility of a floating offshore renewable farm in a selected location. The software can calculate the economic parameters of several types of offshore renewable energies, as follows: one renewable energy (floating offshore wind—WindFloat, tension leg platform (TLP), and spar; floating wave energy—Pelamis and AquaBuoy), hybrid offshore wind and wave systems (Wave Dragon and W2Power), and combined offshore wind and waves with different systems (independent arrays, peripherally distributed arrays, uniformly distributed arrays, and non-uniformly distributed arrays). The user can select several inputs, such as the location, configuration of the farm, type of floating offshore platform, type of power of the farm, life-cycle of the farm, electric tariff, capital cost, corporate tax, steel cost, percentage of financing, or interest and capacity of the shipyard. The case study is focused on the Galicia region (NW of Spain). The results indicate the economic feasibility of a farm of floating offshore renewable energy in a particular location in terms of its costs, levelized cost of energy (LCOE), internal rate of return (IRR), net present value (NPV), and discounted pay-back period. The tool allows for establishing conclusions about the dependence of the offshore wind resource parameters, the main distances (farm–shore, farm–shipyard, and farm–port), the parameters of the waves, and the bathymetry of the area selected.

Framework for Development of an Economic Analysis Tool for Floating Concrete Offshore Wind Platforms

“…The objective of the software created is to simplify the way to calculate the main economic aspects of offshore wind platforms built in concrete considering different locations of the European Atlantic Arc. Castro-Santos et al previously developed a software to calculate the main economic aspects of floating offshore wind energies, which have been built using steel [22].…”

The decarbonisation of Galicia using renewable marine energy

“…In the first part of the work, the life cycle of the marine renewable energy farms is analyzed (analyzing the three possibilities: wind energy, wave energy and a combination of both) and the economic parameters necessary to calculate its viability. This analysis is carried out for an offshore farm in northwestern Spain (Galicia) [34]. Once the parameters have been calculated, it can be seen that of the three cases analyzed, the most viable is that of offshore wind energy and the least viable is that of wave energy.…”

Wind Turbine Efficiency Under Altitude Consideration Using an Improved Particle Swarm Framework

“…Other economic factors can be utilized to determine a wind farm's economic viability. They may include the use of net present value [9,10] (i.e., the present value of the incoming and outgoing cash flow from the investment, and thus shows the total benefit to be derived from the investment in a project), the pay-back period [11,12] (i.e., the period in which the cost of the initial investment is recovered through annual cash flows), and the internal rate of return [13,14] (i.e., the rate of return or internal rate of return of an investment).…”