Program

	Ken Takagi, Ph.D. University of Tokyo Ocean Energy Association, Japan Lecture Title : Recent Movements of Marine Renewable Energy in Japan and an Attempt to Evaluate Japan's R&D Policy

Dr. Ken Takagi holds a B.Eng., M.Sc., and Dr. of Engineering from Osaka University, Japan. Currently, he serves as a Professor at The University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, Department of Ocean Technology, Policy, and Environment. Prior to this, Ken spent 23 years at Osaka University, progressing from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor in the Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering.

At the University of Tokyo, Ken's teaching focuses on the ocean technology policy and the floating body dynamics, while his research explores the ocean renewable energy and the supply chain of the offshore wind industry. Notably, he is the President of the Ocean Energy Association Japan and actively contributes to governmental committees such as the Green Innovation Found and Key and Advanced Technology R&D through Cross Community Collaboration Program.

Abstract

Since 2011, the New Energy and Industry Technology Development Organization (NEDO) in Japan has been a staunch supporter of marine renewable energy initiatives, encompassing tidal and ocean current turbines, ocean wave power, and ocean thermal energy. Despite this support, many projects stall post-demonstration due to high costs.

On the other hand, former Prime Minister Mr. Suga established the Green Innovation (GI) fund to propel R&D towards achieving zero emissions by 2050. Under GI fund's support, R&D for floating offshore wind turbines has gained momentum, with four projects initiated in 2021 under Phase I. Progressing into Phase II this year, these projects will transition to sea-based demonstrations. I will highlight recent advancements in Japan's marine renewable energy sector in the symposium.

Under above mentioned circumstances, efficient R&D execution is required. Our laboratory has tried an evaluation of Japan's R&D policy, employing the Technological Innovation System (TIS) approach. Through questionnaire surveys and interviews with experts, including bureaucrats, engineers, and developers, we compared our findings with literature from European counterparts. Weak business networks and a shortage of skilled personnel were identified as barriers to innovation. Infrastructure deficiencies, such as inadequate ports and vessels, further hindering progress in offshore wind power.

For an efficient investment to the R&D, we adopted systems engineering methodologies to holistically analyze offshore wind power projects, identifying key components, prioritizing technology development, and exploring avenues for cost reduction. By doing so, the various components that make up an offshore wind power generation project visible. Furthermore, we focused on technological development as an application example, considered elemental technologies that should be developed on a priority basis.

	Keyyong Hong, Ph.D. Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO), Korea Lecture Title : Technical Issues and Barriers to Commercialization of WECs: Lessons Learned from Jeju Wave Power Pilot Plants

Dr. Keyyong Hong is a leading researcher in ocean engineering currently serving as the President of the Korea Research Institute of Ships and Ocean Engineering (KRISO). He also holds the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Korea Maritime Cooperation Center (KMC). He received bachelor's and master's degrees in naval architecture from Seoul National University and a Ph.D. in ocean engineering from Texas A&M University.

He joined KRISO in 1994 and has since dedicated his career to researching wave mechanics and innovative ocean energy harvesting technologies. He has held a number of key positions at KRISO, including Director of the Offshore Plant Research Division and Vice President.

Dr. Hong's contributions extend beyond KRISO. He was Secretary-General of the Korean Association of Ocean Science and Technology Societies (KAOSTS) and President of the Korean Society for Marine Environment and Energy (KOSMEE). Demonstrating his commitment to international collaboration, Dr. Hong served as Chairman of the the East Asian Network for Marine Environment and Energy (EAMEN2) and Vice Chairman of the IEA-OES Executive Committee.

Abstract

The oscillating water column (OWC) wave energy converter (WEC) stands as a leading contender for early commercial deployment within the wave energy sector, owing to its robustness and extensive operational experience. This study examines the development and operational performance of two advanced OWC-WEC systems deployed at caisson breakwaters in Jeju, Korea. Pilot plants situated at Yongsoo-ri, operational since July 2016, and Chuja-do, since October 2021, serve as focal points for this investigation.

The Yongsoo-ri pilot plant features dual 250 kW OWC-WEC systems, while the Chuja-do facility incorporates a 30 kW OWC-WEC unit paired with a 1 MW energy storage system (ESS). In addition, diverse wave energy harvesting systems has recently been tested in Korean coastal waters. Through a comprehensive review, we synthesize the insights garnered from research, development, construction, and operation, focusing on technical issues, marine and energy policies, social acceptance, and supply chains.

Technical innovations in the Jeju OWC-WECs address previous challenges, including the integration of a unified turbine and generator system, power regulation facilitated by a customized controller, a dual-mode system capable of a wide operational range, and enhancements to the impulse turbine design featuring a blade-end ring. However, the construction timeline of the Yongsoo-ri wave power plant encountered delays due to challenges such as inefficient consenting processes, offshore caisson construction difficulties, subsea power cable failures, and the vulnerability of electrical equipment to marine environments.

This study elucidates additional barriers hindering the commercial application of WEC technologies, including the absence of technical standards, environmental uncertainties, low economic feasibility, inadequate promotion policies, and insufficient infrastructures for sea testing and long-term demonstration. Lastly, future strategies for advancing the development and commercial utilization of wave energy converters in Korea are outlined.

	Taeseong Kim, Ph.D. Technical University of Denmark, Denmark Lecture Title : Research Activities for Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Systems

Dr. Taeseong Kim holds a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Seoul National University in 2009 and a Bachelor of Technology in Aerospace Engineering from Korea Aerospace University in 2004. His career spans significant roles in academia and research. Currently a Professor at the Technical University of Denmark since Nov. 2020, he previously served as a Professor at Loughborough University, UK, from Oct. 2018 to Sep. 2020, and an Associate Professor at the Technical University of Denmark from Aug. 2012 to Sep. 2018. Earlier positions include Research Scientist at Risø DTU, Denmark from 2009 to 2012.

Recognized for his contributions, Dr. Taeseong Kim has received awards from organizations like the Korea Wind Energy Association and Korea Institute of Energy Research. He has authored numerous publications and led several research projects. He has delivered invited talks at prestigious conferences worldwide, addressing topics such as wind energy trends, aerodynamics, and experimental studies on wind turbines. His expertise extends to educational initiatives, including lecturing on wind turbine aeroelasticity at the von Karman Institute.

Abstract

Europe installed 18.3 GW of new wind capacity in 2023, accounting for 19% of the electricity consumed. If governments deliver on their promises, Europe is expected to install 260 GW of new wind farms over 2024-30. During 2023, Europe added 2.9 GW of offshore capacity.

Europe leads the floating offshore wind turbine sector and will be the game-changer for future offshore wind energy. Europe's floating wind fleet stood at a total of 193 MW by the end of 2023 and now makes up about 80% of the global floating wind capacity. DNV estimates that "about 300 GW of floating offshore wind will be installed globally in the next 30 years, requiring around 20,000 turbines." It requires many floating structures weighing more than 5,000 tons and secured with so many mooring lines. However, floating offshore wind energy is still in its early stages, and it needs to overcome several challenges to achieve its targets. Therefore, there are many ongoing research activities.

This talk will introduce Europe's overall wind energy trend and present state-of-the-art research activities for floating offshore wind turbine systems, including the importance of controlling wind turbine systems. More specifically, I will talk about the dynamic behaviours of floating wind turbine systems with different floaters, such as tension leg platforms, semi-submersible platforms, etc. I will present some small-scale test studies performed together with DHI. I will also share studies about different control strategies, where I performed both numerical and experimental studies.

	Hideyuki Suzuki, Ph.D. University of Tokyo, Japan Lecture Title : Development Trends of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines and Related Technologies, and Developments in Japan

Dr. Hideyuki Suzuki graduated from the Department of Naval Architecture, School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo in 1982, and completed the doctoral course in Department of Naval Architecture at the same university in 1987 receiving Ph.D. He became lecturer at School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo in 1987. From 2003 he was a professor at Department of Environmental and Ocean Engineering at the Graduate School of Engineering. In 2008 he became a professor at Department of Ocean Technology, Policy, and Environmental, the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, and from 2017 he is a professor at Department of Systems Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo.

From 2016 to the present, he has served as vice chairman of Ocean Energy Association - Japan. He served as vice president of the Japan Society of Naval Architects and Ocean Engineers for two years from 2017 and as president of the Japan Federation of Ocean Engineering Societies in 2019.

Internationally, he served as Chairman of Special Task Committee on VLFS, International Ship and Offshore Structure Congress for three years from 2003, and from 2008 to 2016, he served as a member of Board of Directors and Extended Board of Directors of Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering Division, American Society of Mechanical Engineers.

His research have focused on the design and analysis of floating structural systems, and he has been working on the dynamic response analysis and experiments of floating structural systems and underwater line structures in waves, as well as fluid-structure interaction problems. He is interested in the use of ocean renewable energy and the analysis, design, and control of deep water risers, and has also worked on the analysis and design of hydroelastic responses of VLFS. Recently, he has been working on research and development of floating offshore wind turbines from the perspective of supporting expanded use of offshore wind power in Japan.

Abstract

Offshore wind energy development has progressed with increase of wind turbines size, mostly led by Europe which has vast, shallow water in the North Sea suitable for installing bottom-fixed offshore wind turbines. Until recently, almost all offshore wind turbines were installed in European waters, mainly North Sea. Regarding floating offshore wind turbines, Europe was the first to advance to the demonstration experiment stage. In 2009 Norwegian national oil company Equinor installed a 2.3MW spar type floating offshore wind turbine and began technology demonstration. A little later, in 2011, a demonstration project of a 2.0MW semi-sub floating offshore wind turbine was started off the coast of Portugal by American company Principle Power. France is interested in developing wind energy in Mediterranean Sea, and in 2018 a technology demonstration project started with Floatgen, a concrete barge-type wind turbine by IDEOL. The development of floating offshore wind turbines is still in its early stages, and concepts of lightweight and small floating structures are being made one after another. Various proposals such as floating structures using bolts connection, tension leg mooring, and single-point mooring are progressing into technology demonstration phase. It will take time, but maturity of the technologies is awaited.

Regarding wind conditions in Japan, the wind speed is lower than that of North Sea in Europe. Looking a little more closely, the wind speed tends to be faster in the north and lower in the south, and it is also characterized by typhoons. Among Japan's ocean renewable energy resources, offshore wind power is by far the largest resource. Various estimates have been made, but all estimate that the amount of resources far exceeds Japan's power generation capacity. Regarding technology demonstration projects in Japan, a project was started in 2010 with the support of the Ministry of Environment, which has an interest in developing technological countermeasures for global warming. A spar type floating offshore wind turbine was installed and operation was started in 2013. The Fukushima project, supported by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, was implemented in the wake of Great East Japan Earthquake, and the technology demonstration project began in 2011. It was also in operation since 2013. The Fukushima project attracted worldwide attention as it was the first in the world to demonstrate wind farm technology by installing multiple wind turbines, collecting the generated electricity by a floating substation, and sending it to land. A major feature of wind turbines is that they have different capacities, 2MW, 5MW, and 7MW, and various types of floating structures have been tested.

The policy environment about offshore wind power in Japan has changed significantly over the past few years. In October 2020, former Prime Minister Suga set carbon neutrality in 2050 as a national goal in his policy speech, and Japan has made significant strides toward achieving that goal. 30-45GW has been explicitly set as the target for the introduction of offshore wind power by 2040, and 119.5 billion yen has been allocated to R&D of offshore wind power from the Green Innovation Fund to support technology development. Of that amount, 95 billion yen was accounted for the development of floating offshore wind power. In order to advance the use of offshore wind power in Japan, cost reduction is important. To reduce the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), it is necessary to first reduce the cost of floating offshore wind turbines, and studies are underway on how to establish efficient mass production system. In addition, generation of more power contributes to reduction of LCOE. In response to the wind condition in Japan, development of wind turbine blades that can generate more power at low wind speeds, installation of wind turbine offshore and at higher altitude with increase of wind turbine size where wind of higher wind speed can be captured.

	Ye Li, Ph.D. Australia-China Joint Center for Offshore Wind and Wave Energy Harnessing Technology Southern University of Science and Technology, China Lecture Title : Opportunity and Challenge for Integrating Wave Energy into Offshore Wind

Dr. Ye Li is the Founding Director of Australia-China Joint Center for Offshore Wind and Wave Energy Harnessing Technology and a Professor at Southern University of Science and Technology, China as well as an Otto Mønsteds Guest Professor at Denmark Technical University. He received a Ph.D. from Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of British Columbia in 2007. He is a Fellow of ASME, Fellow of SNAME and Associate Fellow of AIAA.

Dr. Ye Li is internationally recognized for his expertise in ocean renewables and technology for his extensive works in theoretical, numerical and experimental studies on fluid-structure interaction. He has been an associate editor of Wind Energy, Journal of Ocean Engineering and Marine Energy, and many others. Until now, He has published over 100 papers in archived journals with 4 ESI and filed over 100 patents. Prior to current position, He was a senior scientist at U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory where he led the ocean power effort, and then Professor at Shanghai Jiaotong University where he was the Founding Director of 300 meter long Multiple Function Tank.

Abstract

Offshore renewables, including offshore wind, wave, tidal, and ocean thermal energy, have been considered as one of the alternative solutions for climate change. However, to date, only offshore wind has been fully commercialized, but it nevertheless faces challenges due to its high cost in deep water and ocean sites far offshore. Among the rest, wave and tidal energy have been extensively studied in the past few decades, while the cost of electricity remains very high due to low performance and high operational risk. In recent years, in order to facilitate the industrialization of wave and tidal, integrating them into other offshore structure become a possible solution, and integrating wave into offshore wind has been suggested by several researchers, considering the fact that wind and wave resources often occur together. Over the past five years, a group of researchers in China and Australia formed a research consortium as an international joint center to address this problem from various aspects. In this talk, the speaker will summarize the efforts of the joint research center and then highlight the advantages and disadvantages of this approach, as well as opportunities and challenges for the future. Several aspects including resource assessment, design, hydrodynamics and control will be discussed with integrated analysis.

Invited Speeches

	Bonjun Koo, Ph.D. Technip Energies, USA Lecture Title : Advanced Simulation Technologies for Floating Offshore Wind Turbines

Dr. Bonjun Koo holds a Doctorate's degree in Ocean Engineering from Texas A&M University (2003). Currently, Dr. Koo serves as the Chief Technical Advisor and Manager of the Floater Advanced Simulation and Technology (FAST), Technip Energies. He has also led Technip Energies' proprietary software development for floating platforms and offshore wind turbines, while managing the Offshore R&D Team, R&D Programs, and Engineering Projects. He continues to play a pivotal role in pioneering offshore wind technology development, including the world's first comprehensive floating offshore wind turbine model tests OC3 DeepCwind model tests (US DOE 2011), the Makani Energy Kite EPCI Project (GoogleX 2019), Techno-Economic shallow water mooring development for Floating Wind Turbine (NYSERDA 2021), Development of variable-fidelity FOWT digital twins for system/component safety in extreme sea environments (OESI 2024), and various Technip Energies' Floating Offshore Wind Projects since 2020.

Abstract

The quest for more sustainable energy has propelled the offshore wind industry toward the development of larger floating wind turbines, aiming to reduce the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE). By 2035, it is projected that Floating Offshore Wind Turbines (FOWTs) with capacities ranging from 15 to 22 MW will be operational, anchored in water depths varying from 60m to 1000m, where greater wind resources are available. The larger turbines pose several design challenges, as they intensify the dynamic interactions with the floating substructure. For instance, a generic IEA 22MW turbine which has a rotor diameter and hub height of 283m and 170m respectively, presents great challenges in the FOWT design as well as the installation, and maintenance. Furthermore, unlike traditional oil and gas floating platform designs, FOWT design requires a more extensive evaluation of the design load cases due to various operating conditions of the wind turbine. The selection of the appropriate design load case combinations for the integrated turbine and platform system is very challenging. This presentation will discuss advanced simulation technologies for FOWTs design, including digital twin applications. It will highlight the application of a novel response-based time-domain simulation method for capturing the fully coupled aero-servo-hydro-elastic responses of a FOWT including the structural responses and demonstrate how these simulation methods can be integrated into smart monitoring systems for FOWTs operation and maintenance in the field.

	Prasanna Guanwardane, Ph.D. University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. Lecture Title : Progresses on Wave and Offshore Wind Energy Research and Development in Sri Lanka.

Dr. Prasanna Gunawardane has obtained a BSc.Eng (Hons) degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, in 1994 and MEng and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Muroran Institute of Technology, Japan, in 2001 and 2004, respectively. He has worked as the Director of the Engineering Design Centre at the University of Peradeniya from 2015 to 2018. His main research interests are renewable energy studies, mainly on ocean wave energy systems, small hydropower, wind power, solar energy, sound and vibration, and machine design/dynamics. He is a chartered Mechanical Engineer and a full member of the Institute of Engineers, Sri Lanka (IESL). He is the founder chairman of the Sri Lanka Marine Renewable Energy Association and an accredited consultant of the Sri Lanka Sustainable Energy Authority on-grid renewable energy systems. Also, he is a board member of the newly developed Solar Energy Research Center at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and a member of the Green Hydrogen initiatives led by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Sri Lanka.

Abstract

This presentation focuses on Wave and Offshore wind research and development, mainly from the resource assessment viewpoint and a brief on capacity building in the renewable energy sector. More matured and cost-competitive renewables such as solar, hydro, wind, and biomass implementations are well aligned with achieving the country's target of 70% electricity generation by renewables by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050. A good mix of renewables potentially resolves those issues to a greater extent, and offshore wind and wave energies could potentially address such issues. In the initial stage, Sri Lanka wave energy resource assessment and characterization were done according to IEC standards through modeling using 3rd generation wave model tuned by the wave data measurement. A World Bank-supported study was recently conducted to identify technically potential offshore wind around Sri Lanka, and it was found that the total offshore wind potential is 92GW, which comprises fixed-offshore 55 GW and floating offshore 37 GW ( in less than 50 m water depth). Though significant renewable energy capacities exist in and around Sri Lanka, the human resources capacity to support the implementation and running of those facilities is lacking. To train such professionals in Sri Lanka, a capacity-building program called THREE Lanka is developed under the European Union-funded Erasmus program through implementing five renewable energy training hubs across Sri Lanka. Even though this sample is for Sri Lanka, it is more or less applicable to many other similar nations worldwide.