Dietswell, a French company specialising in engineering for the energy industry, has informed that EUR 2.4 million in funding have been allocated for the EolFloat project, developing a semi-submersible platform for large offshore wind turbines.
The funding has been awarded by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME).
Dietswell, which leads the consortium behind EolFloat, had already secured Bpifrance’s EUR 0.5 million financing in 2016 for the project’s initial phase.
The triangular base of the float allows TrussFloat to adapt to any type of high-power wind turbine of 6MW to 8MW, and by extrapolating the concept to a slightly larger size, this float will be able to support wind turbines up to 13MW. Ultimately, these turbines will have blades that can measure more than 200 metres in diameter and whose deployment will only be possible in the floating version and far away from the shore.
The EUR 4.6 million EolFloat project extends from engineering to detailed construction studies, including basin trials to validate the sea-going behaviour, of the TrussFloat semi-submersible floating platform using a model reduced scale. The 1/36th scale model of the TrussFloat was tested in March in the Océanide basin at La Seyne-sur-Mer in France. The tests validated the hydrodynamic behaviour of the float compared to numerical simulations, particularly under extreme conditions.
The lightweight TrussFloat, made in steel, could be launched at the end of 2018 in a commercial version.