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and design criteria for the top structure. The guidelines cover floating plat-
forms supporting single or multiple turbines with horizontal or vertical
axes. 2 The committee was not able to review these guidelines for this report.
BOEMRE Research Program
Under its Technology Assessment and Research (TA&R) Program, 3
BOEMRE carries out research in support of operational safety and pol-
lution prevention on the OCS. The renewable energy element of the pro-
gram has sponsored work on offshore wind inspection methodologies,
comparisons of offshore wind standards, experience with offshore wind
accidents, CVAs, and other topics. For example, BOEMRE held a work-
shop in October 2010 that reviewed the expected activities of CVAs. 4 It
recently awarded a project to ABS covering design standards for offshore
wind farms. The project focuses on governing load cases and load effects
for offshore wind turbines subject to revolving storms on the U.S. OCS
and on calculation methods for breaking wave slamming loads inflicted
on offshore wind turbine support structures.
AREAS OF LIMITED EXPERIENCE
AND MAJOR DEFICIENCIES IN STANDARDS
Generally, standards embody the collective experience of an industry,
but they tend to lag the knowledge base because of the time needed for
the consensus-driven standards development process to incorporate the
lessons learned. The standards for offshore wind are still immature, and
several shortcomings are expected when the first projects are installed in
U.S. waters. Third-party assessments (e.g., by CVAs) can overcome the
shortcomings by relying on good engineering judgment to determine
adequate safety. Examples of deficiencies in offshore wind standards that
were identified during this study are described below.
Type-certified wind turbine designs may not meet the extreme wind
gust criteria for some high-intensity hurricanes in the United States.
2
Bureau Veritas press release, Jan. 12, 2011.
3
Information on projects carried out under the TA&R program for renewable energy can be found
on the BOEMRE website at http://www.boemre.gov/tarprojectcategories/RenewableEnergy.htm.
4
http://www.boemre.gov/tarprojects/633/af.pdf.
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