Risk assessment of Floating Offshore Wind Turbine

Floating Offshore Wind has the potential to provide an effective solution for the increasing energy demand of coastal communities around the world if the specific risks associated with this novel technology are understood and evaluated. In this paper an enhanced risk matrix methodology was developed for the risk assessment of a generic FOWT through the introduction of a third risk parameter namely the 'technology category'. The final risk score is calculated using the average value of all contributing parameters: consequence, likelihood and 'technology category' for the avoidance of identical risk values. Individual data collection will eliminate the biases associated with the conventional risk assessment process. The critical failure causes/hazards and failure modes, ranked based on the obtained risk scores, indicate the Floater Unit as the most hazardous of the supporting sub-structures with corrosion as its dominant failure cause. The proposed methodology validation is ascertained through the comparison of obtained results with two similar studies. Its flexibility of use and implementation, combined with its familiar background, facilitate the application of the proposed method for a technological risk assessment of any young sector. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).