Renewable technology insurance provider, Allianz Commercial, has revealed that damage to export cables is one of the top causes of offshore wind claims.
During the North Sea Summit in April 2023, the UK, alongside eight other European nations, pledged to increase offshore wind capacity in the North Sea to 120GW by 2030 and 300GW by 2050.
Last year saw the second-best year for new offshore wind capacity with 8.8GW added, leading to an overall capacity of 64.3GW at the close of 2022, compared to 5.4GW in 2021, wrote Allianz in its A turning point for offshore wind report.
Referencing data from the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC), Allianz noted that 380GW of new offshore wind capacity is expected across 32 markets in the next 10 years (to 2032) with 41% of this expected to come from Europe.
According to Allianz around 2,000GW of installed offshore wind capacity will be required to limits the global temperature rise to 1.5°C.
As offshore wind capacity increases to meet this target and technology evolves, a number of hurdles begin to emerge which, once identified, can be used as case studies to futureproof offshore wind farms across Europe and facilitate a smooth trajectory to the North Sea target.
Based on Allianz’s own experience as a wind farm insurance provider 53% of offshore wind claims (by value) over the past six years have related to cable damages across Central and Eastern Europe and Germany. This includes loss of an entire cable during transport and cables being bent beyond repair during installation.
The increasing size of turbines has created new risk scenarios for offshore wind project owners to consider. In the past 20 years, Allianz highlighted, turbines have almost quadrupled in hight from roughly 70m/230ft to around 260m/653ft for GE’s Haliade-X 13MW turbine.
A single rotation of the GE Haliade-X 13MW turbine could power a UK household for two days, said Allianz.
“We are quite used to wind turbines with capacities of 8MW or 9MW, but now we’re seeing newer models reaching 14MW to 18MW,” says Dr Wei Zhang, senior risk consultant, natural resources construction at Allianz Commercial.
“A project in Australia is even planning to use 20MW turbines. Inevitably, with the increase in size comes a corresponding increase in risk. Although turbines are engineered to work within certain conditions, there is a lack of real-world data on both performance and the long-term impacts on these larger turbines and their associated infrastructure, especially cables and their maintenance requirements.”
Overall, Allianz identified that the top risks and losses in offshore wind include:
- Lack of technical maturity and data on new technologies
- Larger components (such as turbines and cranes) cause a greater exposure to risk
- Damage to cables during transit or installation
- Wind turbine loses mostly relate to rotor blades, main bearings, gear boxes and generators
- Limited access to expertise and specialist technical staff
41% of the 37GW of offshore wind capacity forecast to be built in Europe between 2023 and 2027 will be in the UK, a huge proportion of the target in comparison with fellow nations such as Germany (9%) and the Netherlands (8%).
This makes it even more crucial that the UK keeps its finger on the pulse of the offshore wind market to both address and pre-empt any potential hiccups in the development of offshore wind capacity at scale.
