Planeación

Interviewees identified innovation in technology, commercial and policy making as being important for the emergence of offshore wind and marine. While there was a strong focus on technology development, this encompassed all technical aspects of the system, including turbines, foundations, installation and operations and maintenance. Different interviewees identified different foci for knowledge development – often reflecting their own specialism or interest:

Introduction

“There has been a lot of process improvement and ‘leaning’ of that process…we’ve got better lifting equipment, better offshore” – WTG12

“When I look at what we’ve done on offshore wind…nearly all of it has been developed by us on the job. We’re mostly installing cables and foundations”

– SC14

“There has been quite a lot of developments around the foundation side” – SO32

“A radical rethinking of the construction sites themselves – SO34

“A lot of the innovation that we’re doing now is really around the fringes in offshore wind in reducing costs – such as optimising boat movements” – SH43

“Ørsted have really been trailblazers for the multi-contracting model” – SC56

“The question is – is there one more jump to come [in wind turbine capacity]

and I don’t know the answer to that…time will tell” – WPD7

“Commercial innovation as well” – SO74

5.3.1.2 Motivations

The motivations expressed for knowledge development were varied, and included the large-scale geopolitical momentum for green energy, response to Government funding policies, and the most commonly-stated motivation – the opportunity to develop a technology with the potential to generate profits.

Government policy was cited as a driver for R&D, as MTD22 agreed that government’s structuring of R&D support and other support drove the knowledge development towards larger devices.

Market pull, or the prospect of making a return on investment, and the competitive setting and focus on profit it implies, was described by a number of interviewees as a strong motivating factor:

“R & D is still essential because as we are now in this sort of squeezing of cost in order to maintain it as the most competitive way to make electricity”

– WTG15

“Clearly that strong market pull would have given RePower the confidence to invest in the 6MW platform. Same deal with MHIVestas, and you can imagine these turbine companies all playing leapfrog” – SH40

“The strive to gain a competitive advantage drives knowledge” – SC56

“I think the challenge is how do we make wind on par with other energy sources, and the true innovation has been in terms of the efficiency, the cost effectiveness of it, to make sure there is parity between that and other energy sources” – SO60

In one case, an interviewee combined these factors, recognising that government support, through funding mechanisms, was required to create a virtuous circle of cost-reducing innovation leading to increased deployment.

“I think the drivers all the time have been financial in the race to reach grid parity…huge innovation has been required, which has needed subsidy to reward developers” – WPD63

This commercial driver was repeated by another of the wind project developers:

“Cost reduction continues. It has to, and that’s driven by competition and the technology that competition is engendering” – WPD1

5.3.1.3 Progress

Interviewees expressed a range of views on the degree of progress in innovation in offshore wind, tidal stream and wave. In all cases, further innovation is recognised to be required, even though offshore wind is already close to being a commercially viable technology in the context of the overall electricity system.

The most clearly-expressed area in which progress was described was turbine size, as this has been a strong driver of cost reduction in offshore wind. The first offshore wind farm, Vindeby, comprised 11 450kW turbines [48]. By the time of the first offshore wind deployment in the UK, at Blyth, turbine size was 2 MW.

Turbines being installed in early 2019 are often 8-10 MW in capacity [48] and turbine manufacturers continue to compete to develop still-larger models:

“Turbine OEMs over the last 20 years have always had to leapfrog each other, in terms of product. And sometimes it was rating, sometimes it was rotor size depending on the market you're trying to address, but essentially that's a natural leap frogging process and GE has publicly announced that their next - their third - re-entry into the market will be with the 12MW Haliade. But don't make the assumption that the incumbents are not

“My perception is that in the UK the R&D for offshore wind and development of knowledge has come on leaps and bounds” - SC10

“What’s changed of course over the past few years is that enormous cost reduction has switched offshore wind from being a ‘niche but expensive with green’ choice to actually being the cheapest way” – WTG12

It was recognised that knowledge development could arise both through academic research and through practical experience:

“Some innovation comes from R&D, some innovation comes from doing things” – SH36

“Learning by doing” – PM30

One observer noted that the momentum in learning could be lost or even reversed.

This risk can be addressed through diffusion of knowledge, which is addressed in Section 5.4:

“And we just see this everywhere: that people and the industry are going back to square one – it’s making the same mistakes that people before us made, that we made” – MTD58