LEADING THE FLOATING WIND MARKET DEVELOPMENT

Project Information

LEADFLOAT

Grant agreement ID: 829774

DOI

10.3030/829774

Project closed

EC signature date 20 September 2018

Start date 1 October 2018

End date 30 September 2020

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 3 569 375,00

EU contribution

€ 2 498 562,50

Coordinated by

IDEOL
France

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - LEADFLOAT (LEADING THE FLOATING WIND MARKET DEVELOPMENT)

Reporting period: 2019-10-01 to 2020-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

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 from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We consider the LEADFLOT project is a success in many regards:
- Completion of the WP1 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 below the targeted amount of 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. This has resulted in comforting IDEOL as one of the handful global player in this nascent industry. This has also materialised by the signature of a number of Joint Development Agreement over the period positioning the company on >2GW of project opportunities, with:
> Consortium with Elicio and BayWa in Scotland
> Signature of a Joint Development Agrement with a major Japanese player on a 500MW project
> Several MoUs and JDAs in discussion to expand our pipeline
> Realisation of a number of preliminary studies for major utilities
> Active development of our project in California.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

IDEOL will pursue our efforts on the standardization & certifications aspects of our product development roadmap to further solidify our competitiveness at scale.
As the market takes off commercially, IDEOL will continue to actively secure a large pipeline of projects to be developed.

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