Floating wind is still only “interesting”, rather than “exciting”, RWE’s head of floating development Chris Willow told RenewableUK’s Global Offshore Wind 2024 conference in Manchester.
In order to take the development of the sector to the next stage, Willow said on a panel on the future of the sector, its advocates need to do a better job of “telling the story” of floating wind.
Players in the sector have generally approached government and stakeholders in a disjointed and piecemeal way, he argued.
Rather, “we need to build a narrative of why we need floating wind”, Willow added.
The central problem facing the development of floating wind is the need for cost reduction, floating wind portfolio manager at ORE Catapult Andrew Stormonth-Darling said.
That cost reduction only properly comes from increased deployment, he said.
Willow argued that the age of the demonstration project is ending. The problems the sector needs to solve, like serial production, contracting strategy and bankability, aren’t those solved by the demonstrator, he said.
The headline-grabbing price of €84/MWh for floating wind in the recent French auction is a positive for the sector, Stormonth-Darling said, but it should not be seen as a benchmark for the UK market,
France has a number of structural differences from the UK, including the state’s responsibility for grid connection assets like substations and cabling, and the French price is also indexed to the cost of materials.
One of the biggest stories for floating offshore wind, Willow said, is the Chinese innovation in the sector.
Because of the scale of deployment there, China’s innovations and learnings in floating wind will invariably have an impact on the development of other markets.