The floating offshore wind pilot project designed by industry veteran Henrik Stiesdal is being towed towards a test site in the Norwegian North Sea.
Stiesdal Offshore Technologies’ TetraSpar demonstration project, backed by Shell and RWE, is due to be installed 10km from shore in water depths of 200 metres at the Marine Energy Test Centre (Metcentre) near Stavanger in Norway.
The 3.6MW Marine Energy Test Centre Marine Energy Test Centre (3.6MW) Offshoreoff Stavanger, Norway, Europe Click to see full details project consists of a 3.6MW Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy turbine installed on a tubular steel base with a suspended keel. Danish steel specialist Welcon assembled the platform directly from quayside with no need for welding in the port of Grenaa in Denmark.
The tetrahedral structure will be moored to the seabed by three anchor lines and connected to the electrical grid.
Stiesdal Offshore Technologies’ CEO Henrik Stiesdal said: “So far, we are very pleased that the demonstration project has proved what we set out to prove: that it is possible to safely manufacture, transport, and assemble a floating foundation using a scalable industrialised approach.”
Siemens Gamesa added that deploying pilot and pre-commercial scale floating offshore wind projects can help to improve designs of platforms and to establish their costs.
The TetraSpar demonstration project is owned by Stiesdal Offshore Technologies (0.7%), Shell (46.2%), Tepco (30%) and RWE (23.1%).
Prior to launching Stiesdal Offshore Technologies, Henrik Stiesdal designed one of the world’s first wind turbines in 1978, and worked for Vestas as research and development project manager and Siemens Wind as chief technology officer.
