As the race to harness offshore wind power accelerates, a Texas A&M University civil engineering professor is anchoring innovation, literally.
Dr. Charles Aubeny, a professor in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, has developed an anchoring system to securely and affordably moor thousands of floating wind turbines in deep ocean waters. The innovative Deeply Embedded Ring Anchor (DERA) system provides a more efficient solution than traditional anchors created for the oil and gas industry, which are not ideal for extensive renewable energy initiatives.
Aubeny began exploring the concept around 2017. His lab’s research, including a collaboration with partners at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, University of Maine, and the University of California Davis, demonstrated that a key to higher efficiency is deep embedment. Subsequent development of the concept led to a commercialization effort with Dr. Junho Lee, a recently graduated doctoral student.
Aubeny said the offshore wind industry is expected to grow significantly, with an estimated 270,000 megawatts of floating wind capacity by 2050. This expansion will demand a large number of anchors — about 40,000 for the projected 13,500 floating wind turbines, roughly three anchors per turbine. In comparison, a typical oil and gas project usually needs 12 to 20 anchors. This scale of renewable energy demands a new approach.
“The existing anchors, which were largely developed for oil and gas applications, were not particularly economical, and they didn’t really need to be,” he said. “Anchors for a multi-billion-dollar oil production system are less than 1% of the cost. Oil companies have little motivation to try to sharpen the pencil and cut costs on efficiency. But for floating renewables, the mooring and anchoring system is about 15 to 20% of the project cost.”
The idea is to have a small, efficient anchor that solves a host of problems. It allows you to use existing fabrication plants, reduces demand on port facilities, and minimizes the need for specialized marine vessels.
Anchor strength increases the deeper it is embedded in the soil. Achieving deep embedment in a marine environment turns out to be a challenging task, but recent research has demonstrated that it is feasible using a novel follower system to drive the anchor deep below the seabed surface with existing marine equipment. This deep placement allows the anchor to be significantly smaller and more compact than traditional anchor designs, resulting in substantial cost savings and reduced logistical efforts.
One major benefit of the DERA system is its adaptability across different seabed conditions. The anchor can be installed in soft clay using suction techniques or in sand and layered soils using vibratory methods. This flexibility is especially valuable in regions like Taiwan and South Korea, where sandy soils are prone to geohazard risks such as earthquake-induced liquefaction and erosion from strong currents. Because DERA is embedded deep below the seabed, it remains unaffected by surface-level geohazards, ensuring a high load capacity and exceptional reliability.
DERA’s compact size addresses logistical issues and bypasses infrastructure problems by reducing the need for support vessels and allowing construction at existing plants.
“The idea is to have a small, efficient anchor that solves a host of problems,” Aubeny explained. “It allows you to use existing fabrication plants, reduces demand on port facilities, and minimizes the need for specialized marine vessels.”
The DERA addresses the need for renewable energy innovation. Aubeny and his team developed a reliable and affordable anchoring solution that optimizes offshore wind farms, boosts geotechnical efficiency and promotes the broader adoption of sustainable energy. The system’s versatility makes it suited for other offshore enterprises beyond wind energy.