This paper presents a methodology to develop machine learning models designed to predict, in real-time, hourly fatigue damage accumulation in the mooring lines of floating wind turbines, from measurements of five environmental variables: wind speed, wind direction, wave height, wave period, and wind-wave misalignment. The proposed tool is intended for predictive maintenance applications, which has been identified as a key area for cost reduction in floating wind.

The study clarifies the use of probabilistic extrapolation of short/mid-term data for long-term site-specific fatigue assessments. In addition, it assesses the accountability of the Frandsen model in the Lillgrund wind farm as an example of compact layout.

Turbulence is one of the main drivers of fatigue in wind turbines. There is some debate on how to model the turbulence in normal wind conditions in the design phase. To address such debates, we study the fatigue load distribution and reliability following different models of the International Electrotechnical Commission 61400-1 standard. The results show the lesser importance of load uncertainty due to turbulence distribution compared to the uncertainty of material resistance and Miner’s rule.

Social aspects are gaining traction in wind energy. A recent publication by Kirkegaard et al. lays out social grand challenges. We discuss them for a more technologically focused audience. We describe the role of social sciences in wind energy research, showing insights, topics, and value-added for public engagement and planning, just ownership and value-based design. We reflect how social and technical sciences can jointly advance wind energy research into a new interdisciplinary era.

This paper investigates the effect of wind farm layout on the performance of offshore wind farms. A regular farm layout is compared to optimised irregular layouts. The irregular layouts have higher annual energy production, and the power production is less sensitive to wind direction. However, turbine towers require thicker walls to counteract increased fatigue due to increased turbulence levels in the farm. The study shows that layout optimisation can be used to maintain high-yield performance.