Skowronnek & Bechnak are involved in a number of floating offshore wind projects and the world’s first floating substation concept, consulting stakeholders on appropriate risk allocation and supporting technical discussions on parameters necessary for floating offshore wind turbine systems (FOWTS) to achieve the level of energy production availability similar to bottom fixed offshore wind projects.
Unlike wind turbines, floater systems are not covered by availability guarantee. This means that achieving a higher level of insurance coverage, including indemnification for damage caused by defective material or workmanship, is of greater importance for floater systems than it is for wind turbines which are backed by an availability guarantee, including Liquidated Damages for non-availability.
For floating offshore wind, it is highly recommended addressing insurers by an “industry approach” rather than individually. If we cannot gain trust of insurers and consequently do not receive the necessary insurance coverage, this might seriously negatively affect the deployment of larger scale floating wind industry on a commercial scale.
Addressing individual projects´ parameters to preserve and incite competition is a game best to be played by each project individually, for which there will be enough space left.
Monopilian Behaviour
Ralf Skowronnek has been engaged in floating offshore wind discussions on international forums since 2016, addressing the idea of “teaching floaters a monopilian behavior”. This refers to the idea of establishing analogies between the fixed bottom monopile technology and floating technology when presenting it to investors and insurers, the aim of which is help investors, lenders and insurers “lose” their initial fear and build up their confidence on analogy with the technology with which they feel comfortable and in which they have been investing or which they have been financing and insuring for a number of years.
The “monopilian behavior”, which provides the impression of a “rock in the stormy sea” was one of the main reasons for the success of the transition from conventional large power & utility to bottom fixed offshore wind.
“Teaching floaters a monopilian behavior” means building floating offshore wind farms with energy production availability similar to conventional power and bottom fixed offshore wind.
WFO-FOWC Insurance
Ralf Skowronnek is the Chairman of the Insurance Sub-Committee of the Floating Offshore Wind Committee (FOWC), part of the World Forum Offshore Wind (WFO).
Every month approx. 25 engineers, consultants, economists, insurance specialists, manufacturers, developers and investors are getting together to address the main floating system parameters and bring the latest general industry standards in conformity with project finance requirements. The aim is to secure future energy production availability and insurability and thus make the industry ready for upcoming future large scale projects.
One of the key topics currently discussed is the failure rate of approx. 2.5 x 10-3 for mooring lines of station keeping systems in Oil & Gas which were designed on the assumption of a much lower statistical failure rate. The relevant analysis report was written some 8 years ago. For this reason, the FOWC Insurance Sub-Committee has recommended further investigating whether this “O&G mooring failure rate” is still valid, considering the technology progress and current improvements in floating offshore wind, and if redundancy concepts should be implemented the aim of which would be to provide floating offshore wind systems with a higher level of security and energy production availability.
FOWC has established a second sub-committee “Mooring Systems”, a task force performing a deeper analysis and investigation of the above mentioned topics.
The third sub-committee “Operation & Maintenance”, established by FOWC, provides a view into the additional risks and their mitigation, e.g. dynamic cable failure and predictive maintenance, main component exchange offshore/onshore, disconnection and reconnection of floaters, cables and mooring systems.
Companies interested in participating at one of the subcommittees please send us an email at:
