Transitioning offshore oil & gas contractor Technip Energies’ maiden floating wind power concept, dubbed the INO12, has been anointed by classification body DNV as on track to receive key ‘approval in principle’ (AiP) certification this year.
The “high level review” of the 12MW design, a traditional three-column steel semisubmersible concept developed by subsidiary Inocean in Norway, was called an “important step” for the contractor as it re-enters a sector it left ten years ago with plans for a full-scale flagship slated to be in the water “no later than 2025”.
Willy Gauttier, vice president of Technip Energies’ floating wind business unit, said: "This is another important step towards the full class certification of our INO12 concept.
“Working with DNV on this AiP demonstrates that we are committed to delivering a compliant offering to our customers, as well as state-of the-art quality and performance standards for their floating offshore wind projects.
“In parallel, we already start the design and the scale up of our next products to address the fast-evolving floating wind market.”
Geir Fuglerud, director of offshore classification at DNV Maritime, stated: “This has been an excellent cooperation, where units from all the project partners in France, Norway and the UK have undertaken an extremely rigorous process to complete the AiP. We look forward to continuing to work on full class approval of the concept.”
In 2012, Technip was in the vanguard of the emerging floating wind industry, with an innovative vertical-axis-turbine-topped semisubmersible concept called VertiWind heading for prototyping and work on a spar design already under its belt through the pioneering Hywind pilot off Norway, before the programme was shut down by the company’s board on the grounds the then-still-experimental technology’s economics.
The Global Wind Energy Council expects 16.5GW of floating turbines to be in the water by 2030, a dramatic increase from the 6.5GW it was anticipating only a year ago, with most of that growth coming in the second half of the decade when the sector, which currently has just over 100MW in place, is tipped for dramatic lift-off.
