TotalEnergies has announced that it is joining two consortia led by Ocergy and Esteyco which recently were awarded Phase One of the FLoating Offshore Wind ReadINess (FLOWIN) Prize by the US Department of Energy (DOE).
OCG-Wind Full Cycle is a project by Ocergy that is being developed in Oakland, California. The company, one of whose shareholders is oil and gas major Chevron, has been developing what is said to be a floating wind solution for serial production with today’s supply chain and port infrastructures.
According to the company, its OCG-Wind platform is designed specifically for the next generation of very large turbines and supports the latest generation of turbines agnostically. The OCG-Wind Full Cycle project is focused on prefabricating necessary parts so that the platform could be quickly assembled near the site of an offshore wind farm.
Ocergy’s platform was selected for the 100 MW Salamander floating wind project in Scotland last year.
WHEEL U.S., based in Coral Gables, Florida, has developed an ultra-stable floating platform design that is compact in size and can reduce both costs and carbon footprint, according to DOE.
According to the information about the project, led by José Serna García-Conde, one of the founders of the Spanish company Esteyco Energía, the WHEEL platform can temporarily act as a barge platform, allowing it to be assembled with the wind turbine near the shore and towed to sea.