Offshore Wind Research and Development

With greater potential for corrosion from exposure to seawater, offshore wind systems must be designed more robustly (i.e., requiring less maintenance) than land-based wind systems due to the high costs of transporting maintenance crews and replacement components to and from offshore wind plant sites. The Office’s technology development projects are partnerships with industry and national laboratories intended to produce innovative components, controls, and integrated system designs, as well as improved modeling and analysis tools, which will improve the performance and reliability and reduce the costs of offshore wind systems.

More than 58 percent of the U.S. offshore wind resource is located in areas with deep water, where the water is so deep that conventional foundations—large steel piles or lattice structures fixed to the seabed—are not practical. To account for this unique U.S. condition, U.S. companies are developing innovative floating offshore wind platforms for use in deep waters: spar-buoy, tension leg platform, and semi-submersible.

The Office invests in research to understand and mitigate market barriers that limit the deployment of offshore wind in the nation's coastal regions. These barriers include those related to integrating offshore wind energy into existing grid infrastructure, limiting the extent to which offshore wind turbines interact with avian and aquatic life in the offshore environment, and ensuring that the construction of wind power is feasible through the study of our nation's available ports, vessels, and supply chain infrastructure.

Since 2012, the U.S. Department of Energy has supported a portfolio of advanced wind energy technology demonstration projects that represent some of the nation's most innovative offshore wind projects in state and federal waters. These demonstrations are among the first of their kind making their way through permitting, approval, and grid interconnection processes in the United States. The demonstrations will help address key challenges associated with installing full-scale offshore wind turbines, connecting offshore turbines to the power grid, and navigating new permitting and approval processes.

National Offshore Wind R&D Consortium

The Office is supporting a $41 million national offshore wind R&D consortium to facilitate the development of the U.S. offshore wind industry through wind plant technology advancement; wind resource and physical site characterization; and installation, operations and maintenance, and supply chain technology solutions. In 2018, DOE competitively selected the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) as administrator of the consortium.