Wind energy into the future: The challenge of deep-water wind farms

In 2019, 5.6% of the total energy produced worldwide came from wind. Offshore wind generation is still a small portion of the total wind generation, yet its growth is exponential. Higher availability of sites, larger producibility and potentially lower environmental impacts make offshore wind generation attractive. On the other hand, as the water depth increases, fixed foundations are no more viable, and the new frontier is that of floating foundations. This paper brings an overview of why and how offshore wind energy should move deep water; it contains material from the Keynote Lecture given by the first author at the ACEM20/Structures20 Conference, held in Seoul in August 2020. The paper is organized into four sections: the first giving general concepts about wind generation especially offshore, the second and the third considering economic and technical aspects, respectively, of offshore deep-water wind generation, in the fourth, some challenges of floating offshore wind generation are presented and some conclusions are drawn.