Technoeconomic assessment of floating wind sites in South Africa

The floating wind sector has experienced challenges in delivering projects in a timely and cost-effective manner. This can be addressed by refining existing cost models to improve the understanding of the techno-economic aspects of the technology and enhance the feasibility of future projects. This paper proposes a model to calculate the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) of floating offshore wind farms. It considers the semisubmersible (Windfloat), spar (Hywind), and tension-leg platform (TLP) (Pelastar) floating foundations. The model was utilized to assess the economic feasibility of floating wind in four sites in the Northern Cape (NC), Western Cape (WC), Eastern Cape (EC), and K waZulu-Natal (KN) regions of South Africa. LCOE results show values ranging from USD 199.26/MWh (3250.88 ZAR/MWh) for TLP in WC to USD 235.42/MWh (3841.06 ZAR/MWh) for semisubmersible in NC. LCOE sensitivity analysis revealed that exchange rate, discount rate, capacity factor, project lifetime, and water depths had the greatest lowering effect on LCOE, respectively.