Standardizing turbine designs could cut North Sea offshore wind costs by up to 28%, DNV study finds

North Sea offshore wind costs could fall by up to 28% by 2050

North Sea offshore wind costs could fall by up to 28% by 2050 if turbine makers standardize their designs and developers commit to steady, predictable project pipelines, according to a joint industry project led by DNV, a Norway based risk management and quality assurance company. DNV modeled 3 separate scenarios for how the offshore wind industry could build projects in the North Sea between 2025 and 2050, and the 28% figure belongs to only the most ambitious of the 3. Lower lifetime cost of electricity is an industry measure, the average cost of building and running a wind farm divided by all the electricity it produces over its life, not a price that shows up on a customer bill.

DNV modeled 3 scenarios, not 1 outcome

The study, which involved 9 companies including DNV, Vestas Wind Systems and Vattenfall Vindkraft, modeled every scenario around the same 15 megawatt reference turbine on a monopile foundation, the type of foundation already used on most existing offshore wind projects. In the business as usual scenario, where turbine designs keep changing from project to project, the lifetime cost of electricity falls about 5% by 2035, and the study gives no figure for this scenario by 2050. In the longer production runs scenario, factories keep building the same design across several projects instead of retooling for a new one each time, and costs fall about 14% by 2035 and about 25% by 2050. In the highest volume scenario, the most ambitious case, standardized designs paired with steady, high volume ordering across the whole industry push the saving to about 19% by 2035 and up to 28% by 2050.

Suppliers need firm orders, not a new turbine

The saving does not come from a new turbine technology, the study finds. It comes from committing to the same design across projects long enough for factories and shipyards to build in volume instead of retooling for a bigger turbine on every new project, and from developers giving suppliers firm orders to build against. Peter Constantin Brun, global segment leader for offshore wind at DNV, said, "Industrialization and standardization have been discussed for years, but their economic impact had not been quantified in this detail." Ditlev Engel, chief executive of DNV Energy Systems, said, "Suppliers invest against projects and firm capacity commitments. Europe's offshore wind targets show the scale of long term demand, but the industry also needs visible, investable project pipelines."

How big the North Sea still has to grow

The 9 countries in the North Seas Energy Cooperation, the regional group that coordinates North Sea offshore wind development, agreed in 2022 to reach 76 gigawatts of installed North Sea offshore wind capacity by 2030, 193 gigawatts by 2040 and 260 gigawatts by 2050. The wider European Union target, covering every member state rather than just the North Sea, is 300 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2050, according to the European Commission. Standardizing turbine designs and locking in steady orders, the DNV study argues, is what lets that much capacity get built without the cost of building it rising along with it.