Construction of the world’s first ‘downwind’ floating wind power unit is underway in Spain with a Covid-rescheduled installation “in the coming months” off the island of Gran Canaria in the Atlantic Ocean set to follow, the concept’s developer has revealed.
A 1:3 scale prototype of the company’s PivotBuoy 6MW design, based around a tension leg platform with single point mooring system that allows the structure to ‘weathervane’ to better harness the wind stream, is currently being fitted with a 225kW Vestas V29 turbine in advance of testing of “all the electrical and communications systems to check their readiness to operate, and the adaptation works on the turbine soon [to be] finished”, according to Spain’s X1Wind.
