Portuguese Floating Wind Consortium Gets All Clear from European Commission

The European Commission has approved the acquisition of joint control over the Portuguese WindPlus consortium by Chiyoda Generating Europe (CGE), Diamond Generating Europe Limited (DGE), EDP Renewables, Trustwind and Repsol NE.

The EU Commission examined the application under the EU Merger Regulation and concluded that the proposed acquisition would raise no competition concerns given the negligible actual and foreseen activities of Windplus within the European Economic Area.

The transaction was examined under the simplified merger review procedure, the EU Commission said.

In December 2012, the WindPlus consortium was awarded funding to build phase two of the 2MW WindFloat 1 demonstration turbine, Portugal’s first offshore wind turbine.

WindPlus is developing the 25MW WindFloat Atlantic (WFA) floating wind farm off the coast of Viana de Castelo, Northern Portugal, scheduled for commissioning in 2018.

WFA, approved by Portugal’s Council of Ministers last year, will consist of three turbines mounted on a semi-submersible foundation developed by Principle Power, which was also implemented on the demonstration project.

Principle Power dismantled the WindFloat 1 prototype last year.

CGE functions as the power generation business in Europe for Chiyoda Corporation, a Japanese engineering company, while DGE functions as the power generation business i.a. in Europe for the Japanese global integrated business enterprise Mitsubishi Corporation.

Trustwind manages the wind power assets of TrustEnergy B.V., a joint venture between Engie and Marubeni.