The development of offshore wind farms commenced in shallow water areas with the fixed (seabed mounted) structures. However, countries with limited shallow water areas, requires innovative floating platforms to deploy wind turbines offshore to harness wind energy in deep sea. The hydrodynamic interaction of such platforms with ocean waves and the understanding and quantification of the non linearity involved in these interactions is of vital importance while designing a cost effective and durable floating platform. This paper describes a numerical time domain modeling developed to simulate dynamic behavior of the TLP type floating offshore wind turbine system. The effect of change in platform configuration on its dynamic response under wave loading has been examined in detail.
Climate change and the need to manage dwindling fossil fuel reserves are the biggest challenges faced by the energy suppliers worldwide. The growing awareness about environmental concern uplifts the use of renewable energy for making these challenges manageable. Wind is the world's fastest growing renewable energy source and has become an integrated part of the modern power production in many countries. This trend is expected to continue with falling costs of wind energy and the urgent international need to tackle CO2 emissions to prevent climate change. Future development of onshore wind farms are hampered by concerns about turbine noise, aesthetic (visual) impact and scarcity of land for turbine placement near major population (and energy load) centre where energy cost and demand is high. Locating wind turbines offshore alleviates this concerns and also offers advantages of higher and steadier wind speed, and availability of larger area sites than onshore. In offshore areas having deeper water depth, the fixed offshore wind power structure installation practice of driving piles into the seabed becomes economically infeasible.
