Spanish companies present plans for country’s largest floating wind farm

A joint venture company established by two Spanish renewable energy businesses has submitted an application for a gigawatt-scale floating offshore wind farm to the Spanish government, with the project plans now being put to public consultation as part of the country’s environmental assessment process.

BlueFloat Energy and Sener, who already have two floating wind projects planned to be built offshore Spain, submitted the application for a 1.2 GW floating wind farm last year and the project entered the environmental assessment process at the Ministry for the Ecological Transition in November 2021, according to data available on the Ministry’s website.

The two partners have set up a project company named Parque Eolico Marino Nordes S.L. to bring their Nordes Floating Offshore Wind Farm project to realisation.

The wind farm, proposed to be built in waters 60 kilometres offshore A Coruña and 30 kilometres off the coast of Ferrol, is planned to feature wind turbines with a nominal output of 15 MW and two floating substations.

According to the details in the project documentation, one of the types of semi-submersible floating foundation being considered for the project is such as the one offered by Nautilus Floating Solutions.

After an analysis of three alternatives, the proposed layout of the project consists of up of 80 turbines arranged in lines of five turbines each. The turbines are co-located in a way that would maximise their production and to minimise their effect on each other.

The project is proposed to be built in two consecutive phases. The first phase, with an installed capacity of approximately 525 MW, would include the installation of 35 wind turbines with an estimated production of approximately 2,100 GWh/year. The second phase would add a further 675 MW of installed capacity through 45 wind turbines and bring the project to 1.2 GW , which would extend the annual net production to a total of approximately 4,800 GWh/year.

The Nordes floating wind farm would occupy a site of some 268 square kilometres. However, the effective area occupied by the wind turbines, the floating substations, and their mooring systems is around 134 square kilometres, which is equivalent to 50 per cent of the project area. Furthermore, only a small part of this space will translate into an effective occupation of the seabed, which will house the turbines’ anchors and the ends of the mooring lines attached to them, which may be supported partially on the bottom, the developers’ project documentation states.

The turbines will be connected to each other and to the floating substations with 66 kV inter-array dynamic subsea cables, each of which will connect a set of five turbines in series with one of the substations. The proposed connection layout follows a fan-shaped scheme, so that each substation centralises the energy generated by the turbines corresponding to each phase of the wind farm, and raises its voltage to 220 kV to transfer it via two export cables of 220 kV.

The export cables will run in parallel, and mostly buried under the seabed, until they converge with those from the other substation and all four export cables will then emerge in parallel at the landing point on Sabón beach.

The project will create 14,000 direct jobs during the construction and decommissioning phases, of which a minimum of 6,000 will be in Galicia, according to Parque Eolico Marino Nordes.

In June last year, BlueFloat Energy revealed the Parc Tramuntana project in Spain, a 1 GW floating wind farm that would be located offshore Empordá, near the Gulf of Roses in Catalonia. The total planned capacity of this project is also planned to be installed in two phases, with between 30 and 40 floating wind turbines and 500 MW installed per phase.

BlueFloat Energy, which partnered with the compatriot company Sener to develop the Part Tramuntana project, aims to have the permitting process completed in 2023 and, if everything goes according to plan, the floating wind farm in operation in 2026.

A few months later, BlueFloat Energy and Sener announced plans for one of the first floating offshore wind farms in Andalusia, Spain, named Mar de Ágata. This project is planned to have an installed capacity of 300 MW and to potentially power green hydrogen production.