Bigger and Further? An Operations Perspective on Scaling Offshore Wind Energy (Revision 1 )

Moving toward a net zero energy system demands heavy investment in renewable energy sources. Offshore wind has proven to be one of the most promising technologies in this space. To that end, installing larger turbines further offshore, based on the premise that they generate more energy with less intermittency, is a dominant trend today. The authors explore this trend by building a mathematical model of offshore wind electricity generation that spans the lifecycle of the wind turbines, including the maintenance and end-of-life phases. They find that a wind farm investor’s long-term value is inversely U-shaped in terms of turbine size and shore distance. Using the physical characteristics of wind generation as well as cost functions calibrated with available data, the authors identify conditions where the optimal turbine size decreases in the distance to the coast when considering the maintenance and end-of-life of these installations. Overall, from a long-term economic viability perspective, our results caution against solely focusing on quickly ramping up offshore wind energy generation capacity, inviting a more thorough understanding of wind turbines’ operational costs through their lifecycle in determining their size and shore distance.