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Floating-wind-turbine-(Floatgen)-2---cre

The future of floating wind turbines

FLOATECH

About
Floating wind turbine (Floatgen) 2 - cre

ABOUT FLOATECH

FLOATECH is a Horizon 2020 project funded under the Energy programme (LC-SC3-RES-31-2020 - Offshore wind basic science and balance of plant). The consortium is coordinated by TU Berlin and implemented by 9 partners from 4 EU countries.


The project runs from January 2021 to December 2023 and has received a budget of 4 Million € from the European Commission over these 3 years.

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FLOATECH aims at increasing the technical maturity and the cost competitiveness of floating offshore wind energy. This will be achieved by two types of actions:
 

  • The development, implementation and validation of a user-friendly and efficient design engineering tool (named QBlade-Ocean) performing simulations of floating offshore wind turbines with unseen aerodynamic and hydrodynamic fidelity. The more advanced modelling theories will lead to a reduction of the uncertainties in the design process and an increase of turbine efficiency.

  • The development of two innovative control techniques (i.e. Active Wave-based feed-forward Control and the Active Wake Mixing) for Floating Wind Turbines and floaters, combining wave prediction and anticipation of induced platform motions. This is expected to reduce the wake effects in floating wind farms, leading to a net increase in the annual energy production of the farm.

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CONSORTIUM

9 partners

4 countries

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DURATION

3 years

Start end date
START-END DATE

01.01.2021

31.12.2023

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BUDGET

4 M€

Technology
TECHNOLOGY

Floating Offshore Wind (FOW)

Floatgen 2 - dec 19 - Credits Ideol & V.

PROJECT CONCEPT

FLOATECH has been conceptualized to ensure efficient development, validation and application in order to achieve the primary goal of a reduction in Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) of Floating Offshore Wind (FOW).

 

This is achieved following an integrated approach combining two mutually beneficial actions:

First, a practical and efficient simulation tool shall be developed which allows for the calculation of important higher order physical effects relevant to Floating Wind Turbines (FWTs). This tool shall be disseminated as a complete open-source package, greatly advancing the state of the art of design tools not only within the European framework, but also worldwide. Secondly, this tool shall be utilized to develop, validate and test two pioneering FWT control strategies which aim directly at reducing operational costs and improving the energy yield of FWTs.

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Floatgen-dec-19---BW-Ideol---Credits-BW-

Credits- : BW-Ideol-&-V.Joncheray

WHAT IS FLOATING OFFSHORE WIND ? 

Onshore wind turbines can be found everywhere from the tropics to the Arctic. Three decades ago, developers started putting them on fixed foundations out at sea, sparking the rise of the offshore wind market, which added 6.1 gigawatts of new capacity in 2019.

More recently, the wind industry embarked on an even more ambitious endeavor: putting turbines on floating platforms in the water, rather than fixed foundations. The key difference between floating and fixed-foundation offshore wind is that the latter is limited to water depths of up to around 165 feet.

 

Now on the verge of commercial maturity, floating wind has the potential to become one of the most important new renewable energy markets. Putting turbines onto floaters gives a developer access deeper waters, which means more potential project sites and lots more potential capacity. In Europe, floating offshore wind could deliver an extra 4 terawatts over and above the continent's already leading level of bottom-fixed capacity.

Credits : BW Ideol – Floatgen floating wind turbine

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