Report
Teaser, summary, work performed and final results
Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LEADFLOAT (LEADING THE FLOATING WIND MARKET DEVELOPMENT)
Teaser
Wind energy is a key contributor to the European energy transition that is urgently needed not only to limit climate change and ensure member states meet their greenhouse gas reduction targets, but also to secure a competitive energy supply to the European economy in...
Summary
Wind energy is a key contributor to the European energy transition that is urgently needed not only to limit climate change and ensure member states meet their greenhouse gas reduction targets, but also to secure a competitive energy supply to the European economy in replacement of old power plants to be dismantled in the coming years and to ensure energy security independently from any geopolitical instability. In particular, offshore wind has emerged as a highly effective and cost-competitive solution where Europe has established a worldwide unrivalled leadership. But current technologies limit offshore wind deployment to shallow water depth (below 40m) restricting the market potential to a few countries (like UK, Germany and Denmark), while the vast majority and the best wind resources are located in deeper area. The installation of wind turbines on floating foundations inevitably appears as the future of offshore wind. Floating foundation solutions unleash the market potential with no restriction on the water depth or on the seabed soil conditions, allowing to develop projects further offshore where the wind resource is stronger and the visual impact almost null.
The main objective of LEADFLOAT is to impose IDEOL’s technology as the most competitive in the floating wind market by achieving low cost of production, fast and feasible deployment (construction, WT assembly at port, offshore towing & installation, O&M) and optimal operational behavior (damping pool concept).
Work performed
We were able to carry out a large number of activities during the first period:
- Completion of a large portion of work package 1 on the scale-up, industrialization of the product and supply chain consolidation and we achieved our strategic objective to bring down cost of production estimate to around 1.2MEUR/MW
- Through the operation of Floatgen (2 MW demonstrator in Brittany), IDEOL was able to demonstrate availability greater than 90% which testifies the robust operational behaviour of our damping pool concept.
- IDEOL has carried out dissemination activities directed to both the commercial market as well as the energy policy environment to champion floating wind as a fantastic opportunity to tackle the energy transition.
- IDEOL has been very active in commercial endeavours in our core markets Europe, Japan and California. We signed several MoUs in Japan with important local partners (Shizen, Taisei) and are actively pursuing promising opportunities in California.
Final results
IDEOL will pursue our efforts on the standardization & certifications aspects of our product development roadmap to further solidify our competitiveness at scale.
We are actively working on opportunities to impose floating wind and IDEOL’s technology as a competitive solution at commercial scale and expect to achieve major commercial milestones by the end of the project.
Website & more info
More info: https://www.ideol-offshore.com/en/leadfloat.