Case study

FLOATFARM – Developing the Next Generation of Environmentally-Friendly Floating Wind Farms

Jan 2024 - Dec 2027

Southern Brittany, France

Partner

TUBerlin (consortium leader)

Industries

Renewable Energies, Ocean Conservation

Summary

Floating offshore wind (FOW) farms are an increasingly important source of renewable energy, but significant opportunities for improvement remain. The EU-funded FLOATFARM project aims to make FOW technology more competitive by increasing energy production, reducing costs, strengthening the offshore wind value chain, and limiting environmental impacts. It will investigate innovations including improved rotor and floater designs, a new generator concept, turbine interactions, shared mooring and anchoring systems, and dynamic cabling.

Budget

5.997.630,00 €

Budget (blueOASIS)

169.500,00 €

Introduction

Floating offshore wind (FOW) is expected to play an important role in Europe’s energy transition, but further advances are needed to reduce costs, improve performance and better understand its environmental impacts. FLOATFARM is a Horizon Europe research project addressing these challenges through new turbine, mooring, control and environmental assessment technologies. Its overall objective is to improve the maturity and competitiveness of FOW while reducing its impact on marine ecosystems.

blueOASIS leads the source characterisation and development of underwater acoustic noise models, focusing on the noise generated by operating floating wind turbines. The approach combines high-fidelity CFD, finite-element and normal-mode acoustic modelling with ROM modelling. RAINDROP, the blueOASIS proprietary tool for underwater sound propagation, generate detailed noise maps. The resulting methods enable underwater noise to be considered already during the design and optimisation of floating wind systems.

Different platform design choices influence the underwater acoustic footprint and and are investigated. The results produced by blueOASIS are one of the driving forces on the ecosystem impact, focused on how sound affects marine species in the planned farms in Southern Brittany, France.

The expected impact is improved capability to predict and mitigate underwater noise before deployment, supporting more environmentally responsible FOW design, environmental assessment and ultimately the sustainable expansion of offshore wind in Europe.