German ministry re-ups FINO2 tender

Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) has once again issued a tender for an operator of the FINO2 research platform.

BMWi had issued a similar tender back in March which was cancelled in June after none of the offers received met the required conditions.

The ministry now intends to commission the operation of FINO2 from 1 March 2021 to 28 February 2025, with an optional one-year extension. The tender will remain open until 23 September.

The operator will provide scheduled maintenance and repair, organize research operations in coordination with the measuring institutes, and organize and control all of the repair work, among other tasks.

The selected party will also be in charge of ensuring future research needs, ensuring the technical security of the platform and the safety of people and the environment, public relations, and coordination and cooperation with all relevant authorities.

The FINO2 platform is located in the German Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), about 33 kilometres north of the island of Rügen in the Baltic Sea.

As the second of a total of three research platforms of the BMWi, the FINO2 research platform was built in 2007.

The aims of these research platforms in the German North Sea and the Baltic Sea (FINO = Forschungsplattformen in Nord- und Ostsee) is to explore the environmental conditions at the site and to identify possible effects of offshore wind farms on the marine environment.