Naval Energies in France has announced an agreement with Hitachi Zosen Corporation in Japan to collaborate on floating wind energy
The agreement was announced during the recent trip to Japan by the President of the French Republic Emmanuel Macron and the Minister of Economy and Finance Bruno Lemaire.
The companies plan to undertake a feasibility study to jointly design and build floating windfarms with a capacity of several hundred megawatts using Naval Energies’ semi-submersible floating foundation. The study will examine the application of the semi-submersible floater off the Japanese coast.
Hitachi Zosen general manager wind power Takashi Fujita said, “Among the many floaters that have been proposed, we consider that Naval Energies’ semi-submersible floater, which has many advantages, is one of the best on the market. We hope that Naval Energies and Hitachi Zosen will be able to contribute to the development of an industrial-scale floating wind energy industry in Japan.”
Naval Energies president Laurent Schneider Maunoury said, “We look forward to collaborating with Hitachi Zosen, with the objective of becoming an industrial partner for the design and manufacture of floaters.
“Environmental conditions in Japan are favourable for the installation of this kind of technology and we have all the necessary know-how for the local development of this new industrial sector. We hope that this step is the first of a long-lasting and fruitful collaboration between our two companies.”
In July 2018, Naval Energies confirmed that it had decided to cease investing in tidal turbines and concentrate its efforts on floating offshore wind and thermal energy conversion.
Until then, it had three marine renewable product lines: tidal turbines, with its Irish subsidiary OpenHydro; floating wind turbines; and ocean thermal energy conversion.
At the time, the company noted that the market for tidal turbine energy was diminishing but that in contrast, the market for floating offshore wind is developing quickly.
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