Statut:
Project leader
TECHNIP
Industry Partners
The main project partners are NENUPHAR, EDF EN and CONVERTEAM
Research Partners
ENSAM Lille, ISITV TU DELF
Budget
€ 9mThe project aims VertiWind development and implementation of an innovative concept of floating wind turbines vertical axis can be considered as an approach to technological breakthroughs in the landscape of the offshore wind based on almost all architectures traditional horizontal axis.
Project VertiWind was labeled by the PACA Sea July 27, 2009.
The solution developed on the recognition of the need for adaptation of high wind to the marine environment presents the following advantages:
• Equipped with lower masts, the center of gravity of these turbines is lower and reduces the cost of the floating structure and landscape impact;
• Robust and simple (since no gearbox, no guidance system of the nacelle or blades), these turbines are more reliable and therefore better suited to the marine environment;
• Smaller sizes than conventional wind turbines, industrial deployment will be easy and safe by avoiding the main bottlenecks in the sector of offshore wind (ie naval resources, organizing the construction phase).
In addition, this new design overcomes the current limit of 35 meters depth of offshore wind on a foundation. Therefore, the project locations will no longer be constrained by the seabed (ie, underwater plateaus, shallow) but by a balance between the uses, environmental sensitivity and the goal of competitive cost of energy.
The project objective is to manufacture and test an offshore floating wind turbine market size between 2011 and 2012.
The proposed power demonstrator will be about 2 MW
The target market is the market's expansion of offshore wind, currently limited to countries with large continental shelves and with depths exceeding 35 meters located mainly in northern Europe (eg in Denmark, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and Great Britain).
This is particularly relevant to the Mediterranean countries (Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Turkey) which concentrate on the wind market offshore, the depths of seabed requires, in fact, essentially floating solutions.
More generally, the market potential of this technology is worldwide and current needs and future clean energy and renewable. The floating offshore wind energy is undeniably an essential relay growth in the next twenty years to meet production targets for renewable energy and emission reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.
