Evaluation of offshore wind resources by scale of development

Offshore wind energy has developed rapidly in terms of turbine and project size, and currently undergoes a significant up-scaling to turbines and parks at greater distance to shore and deeper waters. Expectations to the positive effect of economies of scale on power production costs, however, have not materialized as yet. On the contrary, anticipated electricity generation costs have been on the increase for each increment of technology scale. Moreover, the cost reductions anticipated for progressing along a technological learning curve have are not apparent, and it seems that not all the additional costs can be explained by deeper water, higher distance to shore, bottlenecks in supply or higher raw material costs.