German engineering company Gicon has postponed its plans to install its floating wind turbine foundation prototype SOF in the Baltic Sea to 2017.
The delay has been caused by “procedural challenges”, not technical or fabrication issues, the company said.
The facility is classified as a research project but its initiators had to request grid connection capacity just as commercial wind farm operators.
This resulted in unanticipated delays, leading to a loss of about 50% of the total funding because the required timeline could not be achieved, Gicon said.
The State of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern provided €5.25m in funding to the Gicon SOF project and granted it a licence last year.
Gicon SOF will feature a 2.3MW Siemens turbine and will be deployed some 21km north of Zingst as part of the Baltic 1 wind farm.
It is being manufactured by Gicon unit ESG Edelstahl und Umwelttechnik Stralsund.
The company expects that the floating foundation will lead to a significant cost reduction in the offshore wind sector.
An analysis by an independent third party shows that the technology can help to achieve levelised cost of energy of less than €90 per MWh in large-scale offshore wind farms, according to Gicon.
Image: Gicon
Gicon prototype floats into 2017
Floating wind prototype in Germany delayed due to permitting issues
By EBS