TetraSpar Floater En Route to Site Offshore Norway

The TetraSpar Demonstrator floating wind turbine has left the Danish port of Grenaa and is currently being towed to the Metcentre test site off Norway.

Once it arrives at its designated location at the Metcentre site, the TetraSpar platform will be hooked to the pre-installed mooring system by Bourbon Subsea Services.

The floating wind turbine, comprising the TetraSpar floating foundation and a 3.6 MW Siemens Gamesa direct-drive wind turbine, was assembled at the Port of Grenaa in Denmark, where the platform has been completed and ready to sail out since last month.

The floating foundation was developed by Stiesdal Offshore Technology. TetraSpar Demonstrator ApS is owned by Shell (46.2 per cent), TEPCO Renewable Power (30 per cent), RWE (23.1 per cent), and Stiesdal Offshore Technologies (0.7 per cent).

According to Stiesdal, this is ”the world’s first fully industrialized floating foundation”.

The defining feature of the TetraSpar foundation concept is said to be the modular “building block” arrangement: each foundation is assembled from tubular steel modules, most of which are common to all configurations.

Another particularity of TetraSpar Demonstrator is its stability provided by a keel deployed 50 metres below the floater, Stiesdal said.

The keel, whose deployment is the main challenge for the offshore installation, was connected to the floater in port. Once at the offshore site, the keel will be lowered safely and efficiently by Bourbon Subsea Services, which is applying innovative methodology to carry out the installation, according to Stiesdal.