The potential role of airborne and floating wind in the North Sea region

Abstract

Novel wind technologies, in particular airborne wind (AWE) and floating offshore wind turbines, have the potential to unlock untapped wind resources and contribute to power system stability in unique ways.
So far, the techno-economic potential of both technologies has only been investigated at a small scale, while the most significant benefits will likely play out on a system scale.
Given the urgency of the energy transition, the possible contribution of these novel technologies should not be ignored. 
Therefore, here we investigate the main system-level trade-offs in integrating AWE systems and floating wind turbines into a highly renewable future energy system.
To do so, we develop a modelling workflow that integrates wind resource assessment and future cost and performance estimations into a large-scale energy system model, which finds cost-optimal system designs that are operationally feasible with hourly temporal resolution across ten countries in the North Sea region.
Acknowledging the uncertainty on the future costs and performance of AWE systems and floating wind turbines, we examine a broad range of cost and technology development scenarios and identify which insights are consistent across different possible futures.
We find that onshore AWE outperforms conventional onshore wind in terms of system-wide benefits due to higher wind resource availability and distinctive hourly generation profiles, which are sometimes complementary to those of conventional onshore turbines.
The main limiting factor in large-scale onshore AWE deployment is the achievable power density per ground surface area.
Offshore AWE, in contrast, provides system benefits similar to the offshore wind alternatives. Therefore, the deployment is primarily driven by cost-competitiveness. Floating wind turbines achieve higher performance than conventional wind turbines, so they can cost more and remain competitive.
We conclude that AWE, in particular, might be able to play a significant role in a climate-neutral European energy supply and thus warrants further study.