The point of departure of this study was the concerns expressed about a sitting analysis that is conducted by the Greek government indicating the most suitable locations for the installation of offshore wind parks. Based on these concerns, a lot of the locations found as suitable might eventually be prohibited mainly due to conflicted marine uses and eventually the proposed capacity of offshore wind parks will get smaller. Aiming to address these concerns, the main research question of this project is formed as “How different factors affect the sitting and micro-sitting of an offshore wind park in Petalioi Gulf, Greece?”
The methodology chosen to be used in order to address the research question is based on the technology theory; technology is a combination of four components: knowledge, technique, organization and product, meaning that if any of the above components change it will eventually affect the others. Considering as the product of offshore wind energy technology the installation of an offshore wind park, this project aims at investigating how its implementation can be affected by changes in knowledge and technique.
The knowledge refers to the main factors which are necessary to be known when investigating the prospect of offshore wind park sitting in a specific region, which found to be physical, spatial and environmental. Both the physical and spatial characteristics of Petalioi Gulf found to be favorable and through a GIS analysis, an area of about 55 km2, located in water depths from 30 to 50 m and at a minimum distance of 1.5 km and a maximum of 13 km from shoreline is identified. However, from an environmental perspective, the sitting gets more complicated. The reason for that is mainly the lack of spatially-defined environmental data, which cannot be included into the sitting analysis. However, an environmental investigation showed that Petalioi Gulf might be a region with high ecological importance and a more detailed and up-to-date analysis is required before any human intervention to the Gulf.
The technique refers to the technical factors which are necessary to be known when investigating an offshore wind park’s micro-sitting in a specific region. The factors examined in this project are the wind turbine’s size, their support structure and their arrangement. Due to the study area’s good wind potential and high water depth the use of large wind turbines (5M) is considered, resulting in a total installed capacity of 250 MW. Then a turbine spacing of 10Dx7D is considered leading to a park efficiency of 92% and finally, due to the potential high ecological importance of Petalioi Gulf, the use of Jackets is considered as the most environmental friendly option. Based on these characteristics and through an energy analysis conducted in WindPRO, the final annual energy production of the offshore wind park is estimated to be 708.8 GWh.
However, based on the examined micro-sitting and annual energy production, such an investment is not economic feasible when considering a discount rate higher than 5%. However, attention is drawn to fact that external benefits and costs should be incorporated into the study and optimization scenarios should be developed in order to conclude on the park’s economic feasibility.