Ocean Winds applies for floating wind concession in Italy

Ocean Winds, a joint venture between EDP Renewables and Engie, has filed an application for a concession with the Italian authorities for a site located some 50 kilometres off the Sicilian coast, where the developer wants to build a floating wind farm.

According to a document published for public consultation by the Mazara del Vallo Coast Guard, Ocean Winds submitted the application in December last year to the Directorate General for Supervision of the Port System Authorities, Maritime Transport and Internal Waterways of the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport.

The joint venture is seeking a 30-year concession for a site that is situated off the southwest coast of Sicily, in the stretch of sea offshore the municipalities of Petrosino and Mazara del Vallo.

There, Ocean Winds plans to build a 600 MW floating wind farm called Ostro, which would comprise 40 wind turbines with a nominal output of 15 MW each.

“The overall installed nominal power will be 600 MW, distributed over 40 wind turbines with a rotor diameter of approximately 236 m and a nominal unit power of 15 MW”, the document reads.

The floating wind farm’s export cable would make landfall within the municipal territory of Mazara del Vallo. Connection to the National Electricity Transmission Grid is planned to be facilitated through a newly built substation that would be located near TERNA’s Partanna substation.

With the application, Ocean Winds joins several other established offshore wind players, as well as Italian developers, who submitted numerous concession requests for floating wind farms over the past year and a half.

More about floating wind in Italy

• Fred. Olsen Renewables files for floating wind concession in Italy
• Italian company proposes to build 900+ MW floating wind farm with green hydrogen link
• Aquaterra, Seawind working on 1 GW offshore floating wind-to-hydrogen project

As for Ocean Winds, the joint venture is positioning itself as a floating wind developer, along with fixed-bottom offshore wind, and has just acquired a further share in the floating wind technology company Principle Power.

A few days ago, EDP announced that it had transferred its 25.4 per cent stake in Principle Power to Ocean Winds, adding to the joint venture’s previous ownership and raising its total share to 36.25 per cent.

Principle Power’s floating foundation technology has been developed in the early 2000s and is used in the WindFloat Atlantic floating offshore wind farm, one of the world’s first floating wind farms.

Upon increasing its stake in the technology company, Ocean Winds said floating wind installations could reach 11 GW in 2030 and increase to 70 GW by 2040, citing projections that suggest offshore wind installations could surpass 200 GW by 2030, growing nearly six-fold from the current level.