EDP Renováveis (EDPR), the renewables arm of Portuguese utility EDP, has submitted documentation to the Spanish government with a view to building a 144MW floating wind farm in the deeps off the Canary Islands, energy industry website El Periodico de la Energia has reported.

The Gran Canaria Este wind farm, which would be built around an array of 12 turbines with nameplates of 12MWs off the island near the west coast of Africa in the Atlantic Ocean, would be the largest developed to date in Spanish territorial waters.

The project would be sited near a 250MW floating wind cluster being advanced by Greenalia off Arinaga – the site of Spain’s first offshore wind test turbine, a 5MW Gamesa prototype installed quayside there in 2013 – in a stretch of water off the southeast of an island said to be “one of the areas with the highest wind resource in Europe”.

EDPR told Recharge it was “studying several possibilities [for floating wind projects]” in the region. “Spain has great potential for wind offshore, and EDPR is paying close attention to opportunities,” said a spokesperson.

The Canary Islands in its 2015-2025 Strategic Energy Plan – the so-called EECan25 – set out the ambition to develop 310MW of offshore wind.

Spanish wind industry association Aeeolica told Recharge in May it is keen to see the Canaries developed as a global hub for the fast-emerging technology.

No platform or turbine technology was mentioned in the report, but EDP led the Wind-plus consortium that developed the Atlantic's first floating wind array, WFA, using WindFloat semisubmersibles, and the only 12MW-plus machines up to the task would be GE’s13MW Haliade-X and Siemens Gamesa’s 14MW SG14.0-222DD.

Early interest in floating wind off the Canaries has come from Norwegian energy giant Equinor, which last year secured a permit to build a 200MW farm off Gran Canaria, and EnerOcean, which has tested a part-scale version of an innovative twin-turbine concept, called W2Power, off the island.

Recent market analysis from UK-based international low carbon advisory body the Carbon Trust calculates over 70GW of floating wind power plant turning by 2040 – a near-1,000-fold expansion of the current global fleet – as international supply chains take shape to support development of commercial-scale projects around the world.

Wind

European renewables major EDPR floats plan for 'Spain's biggest offshore wind farm'