DEMOWFLOAT

Consistent with industrial initiative of the SET Plan this project addresses the objective of a grid-connected multi-megawatt fully integrated offshore wind turbine hosted on a floating support structure. The Proposed Project is in the unique position to leverage significant pre-existing financial and intellectual capital invested by the project coordinator, WindPlus in a PILOT unit installation of the WindFloat with a 2MW Vestasturbine. WindPlus joint vesnture partners and Consortium members of the Project, realize that the design, fabrication and installation of a WindFloat unit is only the first step towards a full demonstration of a floating offshore wind system. It also represents the highest cost, in economic terms, however the WindPlus, as the proposed Project coordinator is proposing to use the installed PILOT unit to demonstrate benefits of floating offshore system and its cost competiveness.
The PILOT project, funded by the JV partners and the Portuguese Member State, will design, fabricate and install the WindFloat system. The Portuguese member state has contributed 7 million Euros to the pre-existing project out of a total investment of 20million Euros. Due to financial constraints, the operational/ demonstration phase of the project is currently limited to a minimum set of tests.
The Proposed Project ( Project ) addresses the next step, which is to demonstrate the long-term performance capabilities of the system. It is imperative that the system passes the scrutiny of the financial sector, as without project financing it is impossible to install multi-megawatt floating offshore wind parks. A period of extensive testing and monitoring is needed to demonstrate the system s performance.
As with any new technological development, this system requires a significant degree of testing, monitoring, data gathering and analysis as part of a detailed demonstration process. WindPlus JV partners and the Portuguese governmenttook the first step...