A US government-industry tie up has launched a hunt for platform technologies that can accelerate commercialisation of America's fledgling floating wind power sector, with a prize of almost $7m on offer.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) has teamed up with industry advocate the Business Network for Offshore Wind (BNOW) to launch the Floating Offshore Wind Readiness (Flowin) competition “to pave the way for cost-effective domestic manufacturing and deployment of commercial-scale floating offshore wind energy technologies in US waters”, the DoE said.