The Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) in their 2020 Electricity Generation Costs report puts the average cost for O&M for a 1,000MW offshore wind farm at £50m per annum. This includes fixed and variable costs. The UK's target for offshore wind by 2030 is now 50GW in total, making the O&M market worth approximately £2.5bn per annum by that date.
The 2050 forecast of the offshore wind market in the UK is now around 120GW, if we are to achieve the UK's Net Zero target, and while O&M costs are forecast to reach £35.5m per GW by this date it would still mean that the market will be worth in excess of £4.25bn per annum.
This is now the lower end of the market estimate for 2050 as it does not factor in any future offshore wind projects dedicated to the production of hydrogen which is a subsector expected to emerge at scale before the end of this decade.
Image Credit (left) - Dangle Rope Access
The future years of the O&M market will be dominated by the pressure to reach this £35.5m/GW level.
The general road to cost reduction for the offshore wind sector will involve larger turbine capacities, longer blade lengths and be further offshore. While these will reduce overall CAPEX costs they will add to issues already being seen in the industry with leading edge blade erosion, damage due to higher tip speeds, longer vessel journeys and shorter weather access windows.
Better material technology will assist to alleviate some of the problems but it will fall on the supply chain to come up with the innovation across all these areas which will be necessary to keep future cost reduction strategies on track.
Our O&M subgroup members represent almost every facet of the offshore wind operation and maintenance supply chain, and will be involved in developing and delivering the innovation required by the industry, not just in the UK, but globally.
Image right - DeepWind developer group member, Vattenfall, are using their European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre at Aberdeen Bay to test drive innovation in O&M. They are also adding offshore production of hydrogen to this site with their HT1(Hydrogen Turbine 1) project which will also demonstrate related O&M operations for offshore hydrogen production.
With over 25 ports and harbours, O&M bases are are growing opportunity for businesses operating in this area.
Developers are already signing 25 year leases to place their O&M bases in ports and harbours near to their wind farm sites creating the opportunity for new jobs in many of the communities surrounding them.
Our work with ESP, Skills Development Scotland, OPITO, ECITB and the local college network on the new Skills for Offshore Wind Partnership aims to ensure that local people are offered the ability to gain the skills necessary to become turbine technicians, vessel crew, drone pilots and many of the other roles required to operate and maintain the offshore wind farms.
Refurbished or new facilities will be springing up at many of our smaller port sites such as those that already exist at Wick and Fraserburgh Harbours or the SSE Renewables one just constructed at Montrose. Another facility for the Inch Cape projects is also planned for Montrose as well as a recently announced base at Buckie for the Moray West project. As other new wind farms appear in the far north or on the West Coast then many more such bases will be needed by the offshore wind industry.
O&M Base at Fraserburgh Harbour.
Image credit (left) - Moray East Offshore Windfarm
Besides the offshore wind farms themselves, there is the related electrical power infrastructure to be maintained. This consists of the subsea cables, offshore and onshore substations, as well as the HVDC convertor stations, which will also be required for the larger capacity windfarms further from shore.
The addition of dynamic cable maintenance and inspection for floating wind projects is already an area that Scotland leads the world on as we ae already home to the world's largest floating offshore wind farms, Hywind Scotland and the Kincardine project, with the 100MW Pentland Floating Wind farm due to be added to this list by 2024/25.
The huge floating wind projects in the ScotWind round could also see the introduction of floating HVAC and HVDC substations which will come with their own O&M challenges.
Subsea inspection, HV cable repair and maintenance, along with substation operations and servicing, will require a further set of skills, vessels and equipment that our subgroup members have in abundance.
Image Credit - Moray East Offshore Wind Ltd
DeepWind's O&M Subgroup is led by our two industry Co-chairs Stephen Thomson from Fugro and Callum Maxwell from Proserv. It currently consists of 279 members, all listed below. It will continue to grow as we recruit new members from the main DeepWind cluster or from additional new members.
Explore our other subgroups and the benefits of membership.
Our Power2X Subgroup is involved in looking at alternate products from offshore wind besides the normal electricity to the grid business model.
This subgroup brings together the supply chain elements that make up the major components of floating wind.
Onshore and offshore exports cables, subsea array and dynamic cables, this subgroup covers all aspects of offshore wind cables
From early stage development surveys to all aspects of aerial, surface and subsea inspections, this subgroup covers it all.
