Project for Competitive Tidal Turbine Foundations Launches

The CF2T project was launched recently, co-funded by the Ocean Energy ERA-NET Cofund and four European regions (Brittany, Pays de la Loire, Spain and Sweden).

Led by Sabella, this project brings together Allia, Saitec, Rise and Alkit and will run until 2021.

The project aims to develop a cost-competitive foundation for tidal turbines and immerse it to validate the concept in real sea environment.

The innovative gravity-based foundation will be designed to decrease construction and deployment costs, with modular interfaces to allow an offshore installation in several packages in order to limit the required crane capacity on ships.

Some alternatives to reduce the structure construction costs and modularity will be evaluated including the design of a hybrid foundation combining different materials. The innovative foundation will also integrate an adaptive interface with the seabed in order to limit seabed preparation.

Besides, the project will develop a dedicated monitoring system to have a better understanding of loads applied on the structure for future foundations developments.

This system will allow the partners to carry out a survey of the structure health for preventive maintenance which will contribute to improve reliability of the foundation.