Project description
Cost-efficient solution to capture wind at sea
Untapped wind resources located in offshore areas that are not economically attractive represent a challenge for the wind energy sector. The EU-funded FLAGSHIP project will demonstrate and validate a cost-effective 10 MW floating offshore wind turbine (FOWT) to ensure a forthcoming levelised cost of energy reduction in 2030, driven by economies of scale, competitive supply chains and a variety of innovations. The project is the first-ever demonstration of a 10 MW FOWT that will be demonstrated at a 1:1 scale in the Norwegian North Sea as a pre-commercial wind farm. The FOWT is a solid and innovative semi-submersible concrete floating platform that includes an easy-to-install anchoring design, novel moorings and mooring configuration, new cable designs with optimised installation and life cycle management procedures.
Objective
The main aim of FLAGSHIP project is to validate and demonstrate a cost-effective 10MW Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) to ensure imminent LCOE reduction in the range 40-60€/MWh in 2030 driven by economies of scale, competitive supply chains and a variety of innovations. The concept beyond is the first ever demonstration of a 10MW FOWT that will be demonstrated at a 1:1 scale in the Norwegian North Sea. It is a robust and innovative semi-submersible concrete floating platform that include easy-to-install anchoring design, novel moorings and mooring configuration, designs as well as new cable designs in with optimised installation and life management procedures.
Consequently, this innovative demonstrator, as a pre-commercial windfarm located in the harsh conditions of the North Sea, will be the starting point for the large-scale assembly for 500 MW future commercial FOW farms, ensuring its feasibility to other specific locations in the Atlantic Ocean, Mediterranean and Baltic seas. In this context, the successful development will provide a fast maturing solution which could exploit untapped wind resources located in offshore locations not economically attractive today. For this purpose, the knowledge generated by FLAGSHIP and the results of the demonstrative scenarios, will be very important for the industrialisation of floating offshore wind farms.
Technology demonstration can only be brought to the required commercial maturity level (TRL8) by the implementation in a real environment. To this end, 12 complementary partners with broad experience across the whole FOW value chain will join forces in a multi-disciplinary consortium. In addition, International stakeholders have already expressed their interest in the project, including Wind Europe, Ore Catapult, Carbon Trust & Sustainable Energy, making special emphasis in MHI Vestas Offshore Wind in order to support the demonstration project making available its largest capacity wind turbine up to 10MW.
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Funding Scheme
IA - Innovation actionCoordinator
48009 BILBAO
Spain