A problem is brewing for Australia’s aspiring offshore wind industry from the growing shortage of ships, globally, that can handle ever-larger turbines.
Not only is there a problem with finding enough ships big enough to transport the huge turbines and their blades, there are even few that have the capacity to install the massive sub-sea foundations necessary to support them, according to energy research house BNEF.
Industry participants in Gippsland are very aware of the issue, and have been sending out more strongly worded warnings that they need the certainty of the underwriting auction, announced yesterday, to start signing up suppliers for Australian projects.
This includes vessels, which already have a very long reservation time.
“On the supply side of things, the fleet of vessels that can install these offshore wind farms is actualling shrinking because turbines are getting bigger and heavier,” UK-based BNEF offshore wind analyst Kajsa Jernetz told the organisation’s Switched On podcast (not to be confused with Renew Economy’s in house podcast of the same name).
“If they continue to grow, more than 30 gigawatts (GW) of installations are at risk of not finding a suitable vessel simply because they are too heavy and too big for the existing fleet to lift.”
Australia’s saving grace may be that, based on the capacity awarded to each project in feasibility licences and the proposed turbine numbers, the Gippsland zone projects are currently looking at turbines around 15 megawatts (MW).
This is the size turbines are plateauing at because the pressure ever-larger machines are putting on ports and boats, and manufacturers can’t find economies of scale for bigger machines, Jernetz says.
At that size, only 750 MW of projects will be at risk of not finding the right vessel, she says, but as offshore wind projects move into deeper or more difficult areas, foundations are still getting bigger to cope, even if turbines are not.
There is also the fact that the market for these boats is already tight, as utilisation rates for offshore wind vessels is already in the 70 per cents before a swathe of major projects in Asia and Europe begin construction, according to UK research house Westwood.
It means attracting vessels to a small industry in the far southern hemisphere may be more expensive and take longer than the current four to five year wait time that BNEF is estimating.
A possible port and turbine solution
In addition to the boats, Victoria also needs a port that can handle the weight of massive pieces of kit.
Port of Hastings CEO Matt Thorpe was convinced last week that redevelopment plans are on track.
And if just one project wins the 2 GW auction, that will ease the way in terms of the number of vessels needed.
However, others think a more tech-forward option is needed, not only to open up the industry to more ports (Bell Bay in Tasmania, and in Victoria the ports of Geelong and Barrie, currently servicing Gippsland offshore oil and gas decommissioning, are options) but to reduce the environmental cost of the Hastings quay.
Energy Estate commercial director Mark Richards is trying to convince Australian operators of a floating offshore rig called a Feederdock by its designer, German maritime company ONP.
Instead of using a massive vessel with “jack up” legs that balance the ship on the sea floor to transport the parts from port and then install them, the German design keeps the vessel offshore and relies on “feeder” vessels that sit shallower in the water to ferry parts from port.
A massive 3,200 tonne crane does the heavy lifting of assembling the turbine at sea.
“The main jacket vessel never goes into port. The feeder vessel has a 6.2m draft. It can go to any port to collect infrastructure so it opens up all of the ports that are interested in playing in the offshore wind market in Gippsland,” Richards told Renew Economy.
“We’re looking at other ports. We know that some of them don’t want to dredge because that would require an EPBC approval and so there’s talk of others becoming operations and maintenance staging facilities.”
Richards says it could reduce the amount of dredging that Port of Hastings must do, which could make getting a federal environmental approval slightly easier.
But this technology is not yet built. Currently, it is just a plan and some very cool cartoon videos.
ONP is keen to shoehorn it into the nascent Australian market, and New Zealand which revived its offshore wind industry in July with regulatory legislation.
Richards says it would take four years to build the jack-up vessel and two years to build each feeder boat.
“We’re in the process of getting independent advice of the insurability and bankability of the solution because they haven’t been built,” he says.
“We also have independent technical engineers to validate that this vessel will work in the Bass Strait.”
However, discussions around this tech, much like talks about whether and how ports at Geelong and Barrie can play a role in the new industry, are frozen until the underwriting auction is unleashed.
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