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TAILWIND breathes new life into the future of offshore renewable energy

February 9th, 2024

TAILWIND embraces sustainable-by-design principles to shape the next generation of floating offshore wind (FOW) farms.

Floating offshore wind farms are developed to harness the high potential of offshore wind energy, where wind blows steadier and stronger than on land. The TAILWIND project, launched in January 2024, will deliver advanced station-keeping technologies, designed to maintain the position of floating offshore wind energy farms through innovative mooring lines and anchoring systems. The development of these technologies is critical to open new paths towards the global effectiveness and sustainability of FOW farms, driving tangible cost savings while reducing dependency on primary raw materials.

"We are proud to kick off this important project with a world-leading consortium bringing industry and research together to develop more sustainable and cost-effective solutions for mooring floating wind turbines" remarked Thomas Langford, Director Offshore Energy at NGI. "We believe that TAILWIND has the power to deliver critical step-changes to industry practice, and look forward to seeing the project develop over the next few years".

Sustainability will be the key enabler for the value creation of our project in the wind energy sector. New recyclable synthetic materials will be used to develop mooring lines that cause no harm to the marine ecosystem. Citizens and a wide range of stakeholders will be engaged to investigate the acceptance of these new technologies as a catalyst for increasing affordable wind power in the energy mix. TAILWIND also targets a significant reduction of the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) produced by FOW farms thanks to the higher cost-efficiency of the new mooring and anchoring solutions, avoiding bottlenecks and major dependency on the supply chain.

Chiara Palazzetti, Project Management Officer at ICONS, commented: "To support the innovation put forward by TAILWIND, ICONS has a two-fold commitment to communicate and disseminate the project to the key actors in the energy transition value chain, and to contribute to an integrated impact assessment of the results, in terms of economic, social and environmental sustainability."

This project contributes to the goals set by the "REPowerEU" Plan and the "Fit for 55" package, aiming to accelerate the roll-out of renewables, diversify energy supplies and trigger consistent energy savings.

The TAILWIND consortium is composed by NGI—Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (Norway), TU Delft—Geotechnical Engineering Section (Netherlands), Danmarks Tekniske Universitet (Denmark), SINTEF Ocean AS (Norway), Fundación Tecnalia Research & Innovation (Spain), Nautilus Floating Solutions (Spain), Bekaert Wire Rope Industry NV (Belgium), Subsea 7 Norway AS (Norway), Fondazione ICONS (Italy), Clarke Modet Y Compania S.L. (Spain), NKT Cables Group A/S (Denmark), Bridon International LTD (UK), University of Southampton (UK).

Contacts:

Project coordinator:

Aligi Foglia, NGI—Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, aligi.foglia@ngi.no

Communication Manager:

Francesco Agresta, Fondazione ICONS, francesco.agresta@icons.it

Provided by iCube Programme

Citation: TAILWIND breathes new life into the future of offshore renewable energy (2024, February 9) retrieved 4 May 2024 from https://sciencex.com/wire-news/468927102/tailwind-breathes-new-life-into-the-future-of-offshore-renewable.html

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