Pisa promises cost reduction for offshore wind farm foundations

摘要

Development of a new parameter-based design approach for offshore wind farm foundations could significantly cut costs according to claims by a major research project. Speaking at the British Geotechnical Association's annual conference in June Oxford University lecturer Byron Byrne said that the work on the Pisa - Pile Soil Analysis - project could remove conservatism from existing design models. Pisa is an initiative being carried out by an industry working group headed by Dong Energy and involving RWE, Statoil, Statkraft, SSE, Scottish Power and Vattenfall with support from the University of Oxford and including Imperial College London and University College Dublin. Byrne said that existing wind turbine foundations are stiffer than expected suggesting that the designs are overly conservative.