UNH Ocean Seminar

Optimizing Floating Wind Turbine Support Structures: Past, Present, and Future

Matt Hall
Senior Engineer

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Friday, Feb. 10, 2023, 3:10pm
Chase 105
Abstract

Floating offshore wind turbines are a rapidly accelerating form of wind energy, with global installed capacity set to grow from hundreds of MW to tens of GW in a single decade. Unlike wind turbines with fixed foundations, which are limited to water depths under 60 meters, wind turbines on floating platforms can be moored to the seabed at depths of many hundreds of meters. If cost-optimized floating support structures can be designed, the massive offshore wind resource in deep-water regions around the world will become economically viable.

This talk will share research about optimizing floating wind turbine support structures including the incremental evolution of floating wind turbine optimization approaches, current design and optimization thinking, and finally some trends that are changing the nature of the optimization problem. It will survey a range of design concepts and touch on different floating system modeling methods used in design and optimization workflows.

Bio

Matt Hall is a senior engineer at NREL where he leads research efforts on mooring systems and floating array design. He has worked on floating wind turbine design, modeling, and testing research for 12 years and has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Maine.