Commenting on recent developments conducted with French naval shipbuilding and energy company DCNS, GE Renewable Energy has labelled floating offshore wind turbines as the renewable energy of the future.
“Floating wind farms are very innovative and can be a crucial part of the energy mix of the future,” said Léonore Petit, strategy and business development coordinator at GE Renewable Energy, in a recent article posted by GE Reports. GE Renewable Energy is in business to develop floating wind farms, working with French naval shipbuilding and energy company DCNS, together developing a offshore wind turbine floating system that could mitigate many of the challenges currently faced by offshore wind developers — including the need to build offshore wind farms in waters only up to 60 meters in depth, dealing with the natural unpredictability of wind and waves, as well as the added challenge of dealing with offshore storms.
The new system being developed by GE Renewable Energy and DCNS involves installing wind turbines atop a floating buoy of steel and concrete tethered to the seabed below, which could operate in waters as deep as 200 meters.
France is already on board to support floating offshore wind farms, announcing plans for two — including one that will use GE’s Haliade offshore wind turbine for a project set to be developed near the island of Groix in the Bay of Biscay. France made its intentions clear a year ago, when the country launched a tender for proposals at four offshore locations — including the Groix project. Installing a 6 MW Haliade wind turbine off the coast of Groix could yield significant results, with the area having a fierce reputation for wind and rough seas. The 6 MW Haliade wind turbine is essentially the same as GE’s traditional offshore wind turbines, except that it sits on a half-submerged floating foundation. The Haliade is 330 feet tall, with three 240 foot-long blades each weighing 27 tonnes.
France is so committed to the idea of floating offshore wind farms that energy trade group Syndicat des Energies Renouvelables(SER) believes such wind farms could supply the country with 6 GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030.
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