Windplus, a consortium of utilities EDP, ENGIE and Repsol, and clean energy firm Principle Power, has announced the development of an 8.4MW floating wind turbine in Viana do Castello in Portugal.
The floating wind turbine is claimed to be the world’s biggest and is expected to come online at the end of 2019.
The wind turbine has been developed by ABS and is the first of three ABS-classed, SEMI Submersible Type units that will make up for a total of 25MWs of floating offshore wind power.
This is continental Europe’s first large-scale floating wind farm.
Christopher J. Wiernicki, the CEO of ABS, said: “Floating turbines enable us to reach offshore wind resources in water that is too deep for conventional bottom-fixed turbines. It is breakthroughs such as this that will make a vital contribution to the global transition to clean energy.”
“Principle Power is very pleased to work with ABS, once again, in the framework of the WindFloat Atlantic project, building on the successful collaboration of the WindFloat 1 prototype. WindFloat Atlantic represents a major milestone for the floating offshore wind industry as it is the world’s first semi-submersible floating wind farm. We are proud of having led the process of industry standard-setting from the early days, together with ABS, and we look forward to taking the WindFloat technology to full commercialization around the world,” said Steven Barras, Chief Technical Officer at Principle Power.
“Large highly-efficient turbines reduce capital costs as well as operating costs, so the deployment of the world’s largest floating offshore turbine is a significant milestone in this emerging industry,” said Matt Tremblay, ABS Senior Vice President, Global Offshore. “As the world’s leading Offshore classification organization, we are able to leverage our extensive experience with the oil and gas sectors to support safety and innovation in the offshore wind industry.”
