Long-term commitment is needed in order to reduce operations and maintenance costs in the offshore wind industry. This sort of commitment provides the certainty that allows suppliers to the offshore wind industry offer the best possible rates and terms.

The assets required for effective operations and maintenance are often only required for a limited time. This can be a prohibitive expense. One way to help reduce overall costs is for equipment to be shared between wind farms.

If wind farm owners or offshore wind turbine manufacturers can enter into agreements to share equipment, this can help reduce costs for individual wind farm owners.

The idea of sharing has already been put into practice, for example, on the island of Heligoland in the North Sea, Here, RWE and WindMW have opened a joint operating base for the maintenance and operation of the Nordsee Ost and the Meerwind Sued Ost offshore wind farms.

The original announcement of the joint venture hailed the collaboration “as a break from the go-it-alone strategy most offshore wind operators have pursued so far”.

Let’s hope this is just the beginning!