The School of Engineering and Digital Arts (EDA) has led a study highlighting the urgent need for the UK’s Government and renewable energy industries to give vital attention to decommissioning offshore wind turbines approaching their end of live expectancy by 2025.
The School of Engineering and Digital Arts (EDA) has led a study highlighting the urgent need for the UK’s Government and renewable energy industries to give vital attention to decommissioning offshore wind turbines approaching their end of live expectancy by 2025. The research reveals that the UK must decommission approximately 300 and 1600 early-model offshore wind turbines by 2025 and 2030, respectively.
Urgent focus is needed now to proactively use the remaining years until turbines installed in the 1990s and early 2000s are no longer safely functional in 2025, to prevent safety lapses, potentially huge costs and the irretrievable loss of the skillset required for safe decommission.
The research shows that these original turbines have an approximate lifetime of 20 to 25 years, but this expectation is vulnerable to factors that occur whilst in use. Within each early-model turbine, there exist thousands of components and parts that have worn down, become replaced and fixed without estimates on their installation time frame, and are nearing the end of their life expectancy.
Read more at University of Kent
