Offshore Floating Wind Energy (OFWE) presents a promising yet underdeveloped sector due to its higher costs and engineering complexities compared to fixed-bottom systems. Unlike fixed-bottom systems, OFWE isn't restricted by water depth, offering over four times more ocean area for deployment. This flexibility allows for positioning wind farms further offshore where wind speeds are higher and more consistent, maximizing energy generation potential. However, the current viability of OFWE heavily depends on governmental subsidies to remain competitive.
Integrated Systems (IS) have emerged as a promising solution to address the need for affordable, scalable, and transportable renewable energy storage. IS combines offshore wind farms with hydrogen production systems, aiming to enhance the Techno-Economic Performance (TEP) of OFWE and potentially render it economically feasible.
A case study focusing on Japan's Goto City Wind Farm illustrates the challenges and opportunities associated with OFWE and IS integration. Japan, with its ambitious wind energy goals and limited suitable areas for fixed-bottom wind energy, serves as an ideal location for such a study. Additionally, Japan's interest in integrating hydrogen into its energy mix further underscores the relevance of this research.
The initial analysis of the Goto City Wind Farm without IS integration revealed its lack of economic viability over its operational lifetime. However, by integrating additional components for hydrogen production, such as desalination, electrolysis, and hydrogen carrier configuration units, the project's Techno-Economic Performance was significantly enhanced.
One key advantage of the IS approach lies in its flexibility in power allocation between grid supply and hydrogen production. By dynamically adjusting power allocation based on prevailing market conditions and a predetermined switch price, the IS can optimize revenue generation and adapt to fluctuating energy markets.
Further analyses, including examinations of different hydrogen carrier configurations, capacity assessments, scenario analyses, and sensitivity analyses, were conducted to comprehensively evaluate the TEP of the system.
Results indicated that hydrogen production during periods of low power prices substantially improved the TEP of the Goto City Wind Farm, making it economically feasible by the end of its operational lifespan. Moreover, the ability to switch between hydrogen production and grid supply mitigated risks associated with future uncertainties in hydrogen and power prices.
In conclusion, integrating hydrogen production with OFWE through Integrated Systems offers a promising pathway to enhance TEP and improve the economic viability of offshore wind energy projects, contributing to a more sustainable energy future.

Our challenge was to define a format for a mission plan, and develop an application which allows the users of the robot to create a mission plan effectively. This application should assist the user in the process of creating a mission plan as much as possible. Our client was Allseas who was already the sponsor of the LOBSTER project. During the research phase we learned that our application would be best suited for an offline environment, as the user would not necessarily have an internet connection due to being at sea. Furthermore, we learned that the application had to be easy to use and not too complex. Throughout the course of this project we worked with Scrum, our repository was hosted on GitHub, with Travis CI integrated to test our code. Using this we could see our coverage and errors could not enter our final product. In our team we cooperated with an open culture to prevent frustrations. We made agreements on work hours and software methodologies. Still, we faced challenges which ranged from underestimating time needed for certain features to an increasing complexity of code and data gathering. The final product is a web application which can be accessed offline. This application can be successfully used to create missions for Autonomous Underwater Vehicles, which we showed in our final usability evaluation. The LOBSTER team will be using our product to plan their missions in the future. However, before it can be fully used, the low-level control software of the LOBSTER robots needs to be finished by the LOBSTER team.