The company now expects its flagship SOF -- a tension-leg platform (TLP) design built around a latticework of braces and flotation cylinders that sits half-submerged, fixed to the seabed by stiff tendons and four diagonally-splayed mooring lines -- to be floated out to site off northern Germany in 2017.

"The goal of installing the full-scale demonstrator in 2016 could not be achieved and has to be moved to 2017.