Preliminary design and analysis of a modular floating energy island concept

With rapid population growth and the shortage of land resources, ocean space utilization has become a critical area of research. While multi-use offshore platforms have been extensively studied, challenges remain in ensuring their operability and survivability under offshore conditions. This work aims to develop an innovative floating island concept designed to facilitate multi-purpose ocean space utilization in Europe. First, hydrodynamic numerical analysis is carried out for a previously proposed single hexagonal floating platform. The numerical results show good agreement with the reference data from literature. Then, a floating renewable energy platform is proposed to host a 10-megawatt (MW) wind turbine and photovoltaic (PV) panels by the Pareto multi-objective optimization method. Key geometric parameters, including the side length (20–50 m), height (5–15 m), and panel thickness (0.5–2 m), are considered as the main optimization variables. The optimization objectives include its energy performance and construction cost, and the criteria include freeboard, initial stability, and the natural periods of heave and pitch motions. The dynamic responses of the designed floating energy island are also evaluated. This concept will be further developed in the future by combining more considerations, such as the configurations of PV arrays and the share of wind and solar power.