Review of Offshore Wind Projects Status: New Approach of Floating Turbines

Since the last decade, wind energy has been one of the fastest-growing energy sources globally. Nowadays, much of the new power capacity installed is due to wind farms, onshore and offshore. The rapidly falling costs per kWh of wind power have made it more competitive with conventional power supply. However, the further development of onshore wind farms is restricted in many countries due to resource and environmental reasons. Therefore, offshore wind farms, which could overcome these limitations, have attracted more interest from the industry. Additionally, the offshore wind farms, mainly in floating offshore wind turbines (FOWT), owns high power efficiency due to being located in areas of constant and fast wind speeds. This study firstly reviews the major FOWT prototypes, Semi, Spar, and TLP, structures originally from the offshore oil industry. The review mainly focuses on the status of existing FOWT projects in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Lastly, the research identifies the technical challenges of FOWT that must be addressed to reduce the overall cost.