A Risk-Informed Approach to Performance Assurance - Structural Integrity of Offshore Wind Turbines - page 58

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A Risk-Informed Approach to
Performance Assurance
Task I of the committee's charge, “Standards and Practices” (see Box 1-2),
calls for the committee to review the applicability and adequacy of exist-
ing standards and practices for the design, fabrication, and installation of
offshore wind turbines. Chapter 3 reviewed some of the most important
standards that are in use and described some of those that are under devel-
opment. It also identified some of the deficiencies that would have to be
remedied and the analyses that would have to be done before these stan-
dards and practices could be used in the United States.
As discussed in Chapter 1, the committee believed that, to respond
fully to this task, it had to do more than simply review existing stan-
dards and guidance and point to where the deficiencies lie. Other
studies have identified at least some of these deficiencies, and the com-
mittee has drawn on these studies in developing Chapter 3 of this
report. But the committee's view was that, to provide the Bureau of
Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement (BOEMRE)
with useful feedback, the committee should offer its perspectives on
how BOEMRE might remedy the deficiencies. The best way to do this,
it believed, was to step back and review the underlying philosophies
that could guide the development of additional standards, regulations,
or other guidance documents for offshore wind turbines in the United
States.
In applying this broader perspective, the committee reviewed the
approaches to oversight of offshore wind turbines taken by European
countries. The committee also reviewed how the safety of engineered
structures is overseen in other U.S. industries—oil and gas production,
waterborne shipping, and buildings—and especially how regulation and
other forms of oversight in these industries have evolved.
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