Dresden consultancy Gicon’s tension leg platform (TLP) design is a latticework of braces and flotation cylinders that sits half-submerged in the water, like a semi-submersible, fixed to the seabed by stiff tendons and four diagonally splayed mooring lines anchored in place by micropiles.

A scale version of the SOF (Schwimmendes Offshore Fundament, German for “floating offshore foundation”) has just come through extensive wind and wave trials in the Netherlands.