Floating Offshore Wind Farms: A General Study

This book provides an overview of floating offshore wind farms and focuses on the economic aspects of this renewable-energy technology. It presents economic maps demonstrating the main costs, and explores various important aspects of floating offshore wind farms. It examines topics including offshore wind turbines, floating offshore wind platforms, mooring and anchoring, as well as offshore electrical systems. It is a particularly useful resource in light of the fact that most water masses are deep and therefore not suitable for fixed offshore wind farms. A valuable reference work for students and researchers interested in naval and ocean engineering and economics, this book provides a new perspective on floating offshore wind farms, and makes a useful contribution to the existing literature.

Laura Castro-Santos obtained the title of Industrial Engineering (Energy) in 2009 and her PhD in Industrial Engineering at the Naval and Oceanic Engineering Department in 2013 from the University of A Coruña, where she is currently working as Lecturer in the Department of Naval and Oceanic Engineering. Her current research activities are focused on technical and economic analysis of offshore energy, particularly the floating offshore wind energy. She has collaborated on several research projects focused on mooring and anchoring of offshore renewable energy devices and on the development of the roadmap of the offshore renewable energies in Portugal. She has participated in several international research exchanges: National Energy Laboratory (LNEG), and Centro de Engenharia e Tecnologia Naval (CENTEC) of the University of Lisbon, both in Lisbon (Portugal). She has assisted to a great quantity of teaching and offshore renewable energy courses and international conferences. She has won the research prize “González-Llanos” of naval engineering. 

Vicente Diaz-Casas is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Naval and Oceanic Engineering of the University of A Coruña (Spain). His academic and research activities have been strongly linked to the Engineering School of the University of A Coruña (Spain). He received his Master in Naval Architecture and Marine and Offshore Engineering from that university and his Ph.D in Mathematical Methods and Numerical Simulation in Engineering and Applied Sciences through an interuniversity program of University of Santiago de Compostela, University of Vigo and University of A Coruña. He has participated in several international and national research exchanges: Center for Advanced Studies, Research and Development in Sardinia (Sardinia, Italy), University of Auckland (Auckland, New Zealand), Instituto Superior Tecnico, (Lisbon, Portugal), Polytechnic University of Madrid (Madrid, Spain) and CEHIPAR, Towing tank and ship hydrodynamics laboratory of the Spanish Government (Madrid, Spain). He has worked closely with industry; in fact he is currently the coordinator the Naval Architecture division of the Research Group. He has participated in a high number of multidisciplinary and border line research projects. In his research he has combined different approaches and knowledge areas with topics such as artificial intelligent (artificial neural networks and evolutionary computation), computational fluid dynamics, mechanical design and control systems. However his main research topics are ship design and floating structures simulation. Right now his research is focused on simulation and design of floating platform for offshore wind turbines.