Hellenic Cables is one of 13 parties from eight countries that are part of a coalition working to further the design and deployment of a 6 MW floating wind prototype in the French Mediterranean.

A press release said that the pan-European project, launched in Paris, seeks to accelerate the roll out of the next generation of floating wind technology for a competitive, more scalable and industrial deployment. Other participants include: X1Wind, Naturgy, 2B Energy, Technical University of Denmark, Hydro, Ecole Centrale de Nantes, Schwartz Hautmont, Ocas, Tersan Shipyard, Ocean Ecostructures and Cybernetix.

Backed by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe program with public funding of €16 million, the project is anticipated to run until 2027. It will lead to the deployment of a 6 MW floating wind prototype to demonstrate at a relevant scale an innovative integrated downwind floating platform design, while advancing in parallel on the industrialization and scaling-up of the integrated solution up to 20MW+ scale, in preparation of commercial floating wind farms under development in Europe.

This project builds upon previous European Projects such as the PivotBuoy which recently led to the installation of a part-scale prototype in the Canary Islands to validate the technology. Design work for the initial 6MW system is currently underway and scheduled to be finalized in 2023. Construction is due in 2023 and 2024, ahead of installation in 2025.

Floating wind is considered one of the lowest carbon electricity generation systems to meet the energy demand in a sustainable way while inducing better competitiveness, less noise and visual pollution, and less interaction with the users of the maritime domain. The NextFloat Project represents a unique opportunity to test a novel and disruptive version of this technology at full scale, driving cost curve reductions in order to deliver industrial-scale projects at the earliest possible stage”.

“After the successful deployment and validation of our innovative low-cost solution in the Canary Islands (PivotBuoy project), the goal now is to scale-up and industrialize the technology in advance of large commercial floating wind projects which will come online at the end of the decade across European, Asian and U.S. waters,” said X1 Wind Founder and CEO Alex Raventos. “Wind will allow us time to drive substantial improvements in the competitiveness of floating wind as we prepare for long-term mass deployment.”