A consortium of EDP Renewables, Mitsubishi Corp subsidiary Diamond Generating Europe, Chiyoda Generating Europe, Engie and Repsol are to build WindFloat Atlantic, a 25MW floating offshore wind farm off the coast of Northern Portugal.
The project, which will be located 20km off the Portuguese coast at Viana do Castelo, is planned to be operational in 2018 and will consist of three or four wind turbines on floating foundations.
The consortium will use the WindFloat technology, a semi-submersible foundation developed by Principle Power.
The project is supported by the European Commission, through the NER 300 program, and the Portuguese government through the Portuguese Carbon Fund.
It was also selected for the InnovFin program by the European Investment Bank.
The technology has already been implemented as a prototype called WindFloat 1 near Póvoa do Varzim. It comprises 2 MW Vestas V80 commercial wind turbine mounted on a floating foundation.
The prototype has already produced more than 16 GWh over almost four years of operation.
Image: the 2MW WindFloat offshore wind turbine in Portugal (Principle Power)
