Steel monopile foundations dominate in today’s offshore wind business. ENERGI E2 has a long track record in offshore wind and has worked with concrete gravity foundations as well as steel monopiles. The costs of the main structure of steel monopiles are more than twice as high as those of concrete gravity foundations. Installation of the two types of foundation is likely to be in the same cost range – which would mean that the total cost of concrete gravity foundations should be lower than that of monopile foundations. The very low cost of the concrete foundations for Nysted Offshore Wind Farm illustrate this. It also seems that in the North Sea concrete gravity foundations are more cost effective. Concrete gravity would seem to have potential to become the future foundation concept for offshore wind, and ENERGI E2 intends to exploit the potential of using these foundations.

While the market for large wind turbines is almost entirely concentrated in the in-feed of electricity into national grids, small wind turbines (up to 100kW) present a vast range of market opportunities (e.g. in offshore areas, rural areas, private farms or mobile applications). Also in some industrial sector applications small wind turbines are cutting load peaks in times of high energy demand and/or have a green marketing function. Thus, the deployment of a significantly increased number of installations of small wind turbines could have an important impact on the penetration of wind energy and in the renewable energy mix.