TetraSpar Shareholders Launch Floating Wind Innovation Challenge

The shareholders of the TetraSpar Demonstrator floating wind project, Shell, TEPCO Renewable Power, RWE, and Stiesdal Offshore have launched a global competition to accelerate the technical advancement of floating offshore wind.

The aim of the competition, called “TetraSpar Innovation Challenge”, is to identify innovative solutions that help to reduce the cost and technical challenges during the installation, operation and maintenance of floating wind, or which have a positive impact on the environment.

The solutions can be demonstrated o the TretraSpar Demonstrator, which has been generating power at the METCentre test site in Norway since December 2021, or through desktop studies based on a comprehensive set of data from the operational structure, according to the press release.

The competition is open to submissions from companies, start-ups, research, or academic organisations from around the world, who are committed to helping pave the way for commercial-scale floating wind, said the shareholders.

Participants can submit their applications via the competition website before midnight CET on Sunday 18 June.

The proposals will be considered by a panel of technical experts, including representatives from the TetraSpar Demonstrator project shareholders, and the winning solutions are planned to be announced in August.

The TetraSpar foundation is the world’s first industrially manufactured floating offshore foundation and the world’s first spar foundation capable of deployment from an ordinary, shallow-water port, according to its developers.

The fully-assembled floating wind turbine consists of the TetraSpar floating foundation and a 3.6 MW Siemens Gamesa direct-drive wind turbine.

The defining feature of the TetraSpar foundation concept is said to be the modular “building block” arrangement: each foundation is assembled from tubular steel modules, most of which are common to all configurations.

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