The objective of this project is to conduct an engineering study that will address the requirements for standards that are suitable for the design of OWTGs in U.S. federal waters. This study will review the applicability and merits of at least two sets of standards that are relevant to offshore wind power development. These standards will include the API recommended practice that is currently used for the design and regulatory review of structures used for oil and gas development in the U.S. OCS and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61400-3 which has been developed specifically for the design of offshore wind turbine generators.

The study will be accomplished via the following tasks:

1. Direct Comparison - A direct comparison of the IEC 61400-3 and API RP2A standards will be performed to achieve a number of key project objectives.

2. Comparison of Inherent Reliability - The objective of this task is to provide a direct comparison of the API and IEC standards in terms of their inherent levels of reliability.

3. Assess Regional Conditions - The objective of this task is to assess the sensitivity of reliability indices to the characteristic regional environments (wind, wave and current) that are representative of near-shore Gulf of Mexico and North East coasts.

4. Case Studies - Case studies will be conducted to provide specific and quantitative comparison of the two design standards. Two major case studies are proposed with additional cases to be designated at a later time depending on the total number of participants in the JIP.

5. Meetings - Project meetings will be held throughout the project as necessary.

Privacy | Disclaimers | Accessibility | Topic Index | FOIA

Last Updated: 08/04/2008, 02:18 PM