The project, called PAREF, aims to design, fabricate, and test a reusable anchoring system, high and low connectors, and tendons while minimising the impact on the marine environment, with an ultimate goal of accelerating industrial-scale development of floating wind.
The PAREF project will provide the anchoring system for the NextFloat project for whose delivery Technip Energies, X1 Wind and a consortium of ten international partners were chosen by the European Commission in 2022.
NextFloat involves deploying a 6 MW offshore wind turbine prototype comprising X1 Wind’s floating technology and a compact mooring system that minimises seabed impact. The prototype will be installed at a test site in the Mediterranean Sea offshore France for operation in open-sea conditions.
The NextFloat platform will provide the means for an in situ test of the system developed by the PAREF consortium for a minimum of two years, the consortium says.
The 6 MW floating wind prototype at the Mistral test site in France is planned to demonstrate an integrated downwind floating platform design at a relevant scale, while simultaneously advancing the scaling up of the integrated solution to up to 20+ MW scale, in preparation of commercial floating wind farms under development in Europe.
Last year, X1 Wind’s X90 6 MW pre-commercial floating wind platform was granted the Statement of Feasibility from the classification society DNV.
