Unconventional Offshore Structures-Wind Farms

Offshore Structures have been one of the most indigenous creations of man as it gave him access to the nature’s treasury of fuel and mineral reserves present in ample amounts underneath the oceans. A very important objective behind offshore structures is that man still has his limitations at land. Venturing into the oceans for the quest of abundant resources which were by far, unavailable or scanty in land can meet most of his needs.

Figure 1. Illustration of offshore extraction

With various types, their research and development needs a lot of work force and statistical data. Different parts of ocean have different kind of weather and wave pattern to which an offshore structure is subjected. The external forces includes waves, wind, currents and corrosion along with other environmental vagaries.We know these structures are built at higher stakes and thus must reciprocate greater revenues which needs the efficiency to be maximum.

So far we had known of conventional ones like Jacket Platforms, Rigs, Drill ships, Spars, FPSOs, TLPs, Fixed or gravity based structures. These are segregated as: movable and immovable. Most of them are dedicated to more or less the same types of purpose: exploration, extraction, processing and/or transportation of petroleum and oil products derived from the deep sea reserves. A lot of analysis is done on them including strength calculations, advanced extraction techniques, software interpretations or safer installation-cum-maintenance goals.

Figure 2.: Conventional Oil Rig

But have we ever wondered, can offshore structures be solely employed for the sake of exploiting resources that were limited or absent on land? Can they be utilized as improvements over infrastructure that are already present on land for better outcomes?

The answer lies in certain unconventional offshore structures such as wind farms, subsea pipelines, unconventional offshore gas stations or hydel-power installations which are focused mainly on tapping abundant 'oceanic' natural resources ( plentiful, renewable) for the purpose of generation of power on a widespread scale. As we are well aware of, renewable resources such as coal, natural gas and other earth derivatives are dwindling drastically. Thus to meet the insatiable needs of the ever-inflating population, Alternative forms of natural resources should be ingenuously exploited. Some of them are already materialized, but more needs to be done for achieving a global trend. 

Here we limit our discussion only to Offshore Wind Farms- a big trend setter . Later we take some of the others.