Shared moorings for floating offshore renewable energy technologies: A review

The next frontier in the floating offshore renewable energy (FORE) industry is the development of large-scale farms comprising arrays of devices. With the goal of reducing the CAPEX and installation costs, shared mooring systems where anchors (and a part of the mooring line) are shared between adjacent devices, have been proposed. However, the industry is prudent towards adaptation of shared moorings and anchors due to a number of challenges which manifest differently in shallow and deep water. Shared moorings/anchors in shallow waters are susceptible to snap loads stemming from complex environmental conditions whilst the deep-water counterpart is, in and of itself, structurally complex and susceptible to peak anchor loads. The aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive review of shared moorings/anchors within the FORE industry with particular emphasis on the floating wind, solar and wave energy sectors. The advent of shared moorings is traced back to the wisdom perceived from conventional offshore industries such as O&G and/or aquaculture, respectively. In addition, an appraisal of the types of shared mooring systems for canonical FORE technologies installed in shallow and deep water is provided. A detailed presentation of device-specific configurations which brings forth the scope for adoption of shared moorings in each FORE sector is provided. This is followed by a comprehensive summary of various thrust areas identified by the industry, the corresponding academic research effort and the emerging knowledge gaps. Based on the findings, the present review identifies the need for developing higher-fidelity futuristic design tools to accelerate the application of shared moorings and anchors by the FORE industry.