Optimization of floating wind turbines using innovative control techniques and fully coupled open source engineering tool

Wind is one of the leading sources of renewables contributing to EU energy mix, and its exploitation is pivotal to meet many of next environmental and energy policy goals.

Europe being one of the world technological leaders, its wind energy sector has evolved into an important industry providing hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Due to the limitations of available installation sites onshore, offshore wind is becoming crucial to ensure the further growth of the sector.

In this scenario, exploiting the vast wind resources in deeper waters using floating wind farms and developing the required technology will enhance EUs economy and will contribute to achieve its green energy goals.

FLOATECH aims at stimulating this transition by increasing the technical maturity and the cost competitiveness of floating offshore wind energy. This will be achieved by two types of actions.

On the one hand, a fully-coupled, aero-hydro-servo-elastic design and simulation environment (named QBlade-Ocean) will be developed.

The more advanced modelling theories will lead to a reduction of the uncertainties in the design process and then to more efficient, reliable and cost-effective floating wind turbines.

On the other hand, two innovative control techniques will be introduced, i.e. the Active Wave-based feed-forward Control and the Active Wake Mixing, which will lead to an increase of the actual energy yield of floating wind farms.

Wave tank and wind tunnel experiments, as well as the application to a utility-size floating wind turbine are foreseen as validation and demonstration methods.The consortium comprises five public research institutions with relevant skills in the field of offshore floating wind energy, and three industrial partners, two of which have been involved in the most recent developments of floating wind systems.

An innovation advisory board including stakeholders such as certifiers, research and business networks will support the dissemination of the project results.