Offshore Wind Technology and Status - Structural Integrity of Offshore Wind Turbines - page 25

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FIGURE 2-8 Installed offshore wind capacity worldwide by year, 1990-2009.
(S OURCE : Musial and Ram 2010, Section 2, 10-22.)

Figure 2-8 shows the installed offshore wind capacity worldwide by year.
The development of offshore wind as an energy source began in the early
1990s, but significant capacity expansion did not begin until around 2000,
when project size increased from small pilot projects to utility-based wind
facilities. The industry experienced a slowdown in 2004 and 2005 that can
be attributed to reliability problems and cost overruns experienced at some
of the first large Danish wind projects. This resulted in reduced market con-
fidence and an industry reassessment of technology requirements, some of
which may be attributed to immature certification and lack of enforce-
ment. Recently, some problems with corrosion have been discovered. For
example, in late 2010 Siemens discovered that corrosion protection had
failed for the pitch bearings in its 3.6-MW offshore wind turbines in four
wind farms. 1 Recently, the market has regained momentum as the indus-
try has overcome some of these problems and is trending toward more sus-
tained growth. This is evidenced by both the increase in deployments seen
in Figure 2-8 and in the long-term goals set by the European Union, which
call for 150 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030.

1

http://ecoperiodicals.com/2010/08/13/siemens-hires-vessel-to-tackle-turbine-corrosion.