Ideol floater exceeds performance expectations in offshore demo

The French company behind the damping pool floating offshore wind foundation says its performance has exceeded expectations in tests off the coast of the country.

A 2-MW Floatgen floating wind turbine with Ideol’s floating foundation has been undergoing tests at the Sem-Rev test site on the Atlantic coast of France for several months. The company said the tests demonstrated that the damping pool technology is “fully validated and ready for commercial-scale deployments.”

During the first six months of 2019, the floating wind turbine – which is also France’s first offshore wind turbine – produced 2.2 GWh and faced significant wave heights (Hs) up to 6.2 m.

A progressive ramping-up of the full-scale demonstrator was carried out over a few months. Particularly noteworthy was the fact that the turbine was operational and produced power during Storm Miguel on 7 June 2019, which created a combination of significant wave height of 4.4 m, winds of 22 m/s with gusts up to 103 km/h.

Ideol said the floater had an average availability of in excess of 90% during Q2 2019 (68% in the first quarter) and it intends to steadily ramp up availability by the end of 2019.

Ideol’s technology is also being deployed on a second Japanese demonstrator that has faced no less than three typhoons since its commissioning in September 2018.

“Ideol’s technology is thus fully validated and ready for future commercial tenders in France, the UK, Japan and many other countries,” the company concluded.