The Spanish company Iberdrola Renovables and SENER, Ingenieria y Sistemas, have signed an agreement for the active participation of SENER in the R&D concerning floating wind turbine supports moored over deep waters -more than 50m depth. The project, named as Proyecto Emerge, has been promoted from the off-shore wind projects department at Iberdrola Renovables.
The scope of the researching project includes two different phases. From the first one, consisting on the execution of all the engineering works for the development of the floating wind turbine supports, SENER have assumed those regarding the marine engineering. This phase, in its turn, is divided into two steps, being the first one devoted to the viability aspects, both technical and commercial. This is particularly complex due to the absence of commercial off-shore floating wind turbines nowadays.
SENER expects to have some alternative answers by December 2009, from which a short list would be fully developed, for classification and detailed design.
The second phase of the project -the execution of the prototypes- will depend on the results obtained at the end of phase one.
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