Developing offshore wind energy in Australia

Blue Economy CRC research has highlighted the potential of offshore wind in Australia’s future energy planning. Ongoing work has addressed key preconditions for the development of offshore wind in Australia, addressing social acceptability, law and policy settings, and supply chain operations.

The key to this current work is a commitment to a pre-competitive collaborative approach between the BE CRC and industry and government to support efficacy, integrity and good governance in the development of Australia’s offshore wind industry.

This webinar will cover research insights from BE CRC ‘Preconditions for development offshore wind energy in Australia project:

Research insights from BE CRC “Preconditions for development offshore wind energy in Australia project”
• Policy and regulation (Danielle Smith, UQ)
• Social acceptability (Hugh Breakey, Griffith Uni)
• Supply chains (Stephen Cahoon, AMC/UTAS)

Industry partner perspectives
• Nexsphere (Anna Lewis)
• Southerly Ten (Erin Coldham)
• BMT (Hossein Agheshlui)
• SINTEF (Dorothy Dankel)
• Saitec (Alberto Galdos)

Bringing it together – the significance of the “value chain” (Martin Farley Uni of Tasmania)

Discussion – through Q&A function on Zoom moderated by Marcus Haward

[iantag]

Construction from scratch in Australia is of a magnitude that dwarfs previous shipbuilding. Eg Hunter 5GW floating offshore at 15 MW/unit ~ 330 units. Lets say 1st phase in 100 units deployed in 1 year (1500 MW) - about 2 'coal fired boilers' worth). Estimated steel is 4000t/unit. So to construct 100 units = 400, 000 tonnes. Biggest ships that used to be built in Australia were 10-12, 000 tonnes. To build 100 units requires Port of Newcastle to construct and deploy about 2 units per week (in this scenario) . This is all getting to be a bit of a stretch. Failure statistics for offshore turbines have been quoted as high a 8 failures per year per turbine !! (about 1000 hr MTBF per unit) - so you need a fully function maintenance and supply facility once the first units are even online. Failure of Electrical Cabling interconnects are well known/reported and bordering on UN-insurability (that alone is a project killer). This tells me that : a single step into an offshore wind mega-project in Australia is extremely risky (or simply foolhardy) and instead, Australia needs a softly-softly staged approach to even know the beast they are trying to create. A staged approach says start with a fast-tracked pilot project of (say) 5-10 offshore units before you bet the farm. BTW - part of my background was reviewing major capital projects for an O&G majors - where serial #1 was something that rarely delivered. Not impossible; but a supply chain nightmare for the 1st in Oz.

[MichaelSmith-pxev]

Sounds like the speakers weren’t aware how much time they were allowed to speak. Supply chain has massive issues here hopefully they can resolve this ASAP