With a French Government grant of €5.7 million, Velella has the objective of qualifying several technology bricks and innovative methods needed to prepare the deployment of commercial floating wind projects under the best economic, social, and environmental conditions.
The first axis aims at pursuing efforts to optimise the economic and environmental performance of the BW Ideol floater, particularly within the framework of tomorrow’s largest wind turbines (>20 MW).
The second axis will feature the on-site deployment of mooring lines made up of innovative materials and the implementation of new underwater surveillance and inspection methods to further reduce costs during operation.
The evaluation of socio-economic impacts and the structuring of the floating wind power sector will form the third axis.
The second axis will feature the on-site deployment of mooring lines made up of innovative materials and the implementation of new underwater surveillance and inspection methods to further reduce costs during operation.
The evaluation of socio-economic impacts and the structuring of the floating wind power sector will form the third axis.
Finally, all efforts will be guided by an eco-design approach, where each innovation will be analysed and assessed from life cycle analysis (LCA), recyclability, and potential consequences for the marine environment points of view.
Tests will be carried out on various sites and assets owned by the partners, including BW Ideol’s Floatgen wind turbine, which has been operating for the last 5 years on Centrale Nantes’s SEM-REV test site off Le Croisic, a test site now operated by the OPEN-C Foundation.
The Velella R&D project brings together multiple international industrial and academic players: BW Ideol, as consortium and project leader, Centrale Nantes, the OPEN-C Foundation, IFREMER, ENSTA Bretagne and IVM Technologies.
