BW Ideol has revealed that its 5-year-old floating wind turbine Floatgen demonstrator has been showing a capacity factor of nearly 60% over the last three months and a production of 25GWh since its 2018 commissioning.
The 2MW French floating wind turbine delivered an average capacity factor of 59.2% over a 3-month period ranging from November 2022 to January 2023, the company said.
The 25 GWh-milestone was reached just after the major Atlantic storm Gerard in late January.
The Floatgen turbine, mounted on BW Ideol’s patented Damping Pool®foundation, handled wind speeds up to 37.30 metres per second (equivalent to 134 km/h) and up to 5.5 metres of significant wave height (equivalent to around 10.5 metres maximum wave height).
BW Ideol chief executive Paul de la Guérivière said: “Floatgen –one of the few floating wind turbines currently in operation across the globe – continues to deliver outstanding results in terms of reliability, efficiency and production.
“It keeps on validating the merits of our unique floating offshore wind technology, even in the harshest environments.
“Such repeated performance, high availability and consequently high capacity factor underlines the benefits of floating wind and its ability to capture the best possible wind resources without depth constraints, contributing to a much needed energy resilience in the process.”
Floatgen has been operating in 33 metres water depth off the coast of Le Croisic (Western France) since 2018.
It provides electricity to approximately 3,000 households.