UK-based OceanFlow Energy Limited will put a scaled version of its Starfloat floating wind foundation to test after being awarded Marinet2 funds for the project.
The company has partnered with the Marine Offshore Renewable Energy Team (MORE) on the Performance Analysis of a Multifloat Spar (PAMS) project, under which the two parties will carry out 1:36 scale model tests on the tethered device in a wave making basin in order to validate the hydrodynamics of the novel multi-float spar floating wind turbine foundation system.
Following the small-scale tests, the medium-term objective is to build a large scale prototype device for deploying in a real sea environment and outfitting the device with a working horizontal axis wind turbine.
According to MORE, OceanFlow has completed a Horizon 2020 SME Instrument Feasibility Study which showed the superior economics of the simple multifloat-spar geometry.
MORE is a group of researchers from the Centre for Marine and Environmental Research (CIMA) from the University of Algarve, Portugal, whose focus is on the support of the optimization of different types of marine renewable technologies to produce energy from ocean processes.