Approval for FOWT foundation

Designed by California-based Principle Power, Inc, a technology and services provider for the offshore deepwater wind energy market, the WindFloat consists of a ballasted floating platform that supports a multi-megawatt wind turbine generator.
“FOWT technology will help exploit clean renewable offshore wind power," said Matthieu de Tugny, senior vice president and head of the offshore division of Bureau Veritas. "It offers substantial advantages over fixed offshore wind turbines as the entire unit can be assembled ashore and FOWTs can be installed in deep water and areas with varied underwater landscapes. There is also a much lower environmental impact from their installation. Our expertise with the offshore floating structures and metocean conditions means we can ensure designs for new FOWTs will be safe, reliable and will produce power over the expected range of environmental conditions.”
The WindFloat is unmanned and carries no significant quantity of pollutant substances, according to Bureau Veritas. The three-column platform is moored with a three-line catenary mooring system and equipped with a closed-loop ballast system to compensate for changes in mean wind velocity and direction.
A first WindFloat prototype has been deployed 5km off the coast of Aguçadoura, Portugal, since 2011. The system has produced and delivered over16 GWh of electricity to the grid to date. Bureau Veritas said the second generation of WindFloat technology, addressed by the present AIP, was intended to be part of a pilot array of floating offshore wind turbines in the French Mediterranean Sea, to be developed by the French companies ENGIE and Eiffage.