Offshore wind has emerged as a highly effective, cost competitive and a key contributor to the European energy transition challenge. Yet, current technologies limit offshore wind deployment to shallow water depth (less than 40m) restricting the market potential to a few countries (mainly the North Sea), while the vast majority and the best wind resources are located in deep waters. The installation of wind turbines on floating foundations inevitably appears as the future of offshore wind. Floating foundation solutions unleashes the market potential with no restriction on the water depth or on the seabed soil conditions, allowing developing projects further offshore where wind is stronger and the visual impact is limited. IDEOL, a French SME created in 2010, has emerged as one of the few international leaders in floating wind, with two demonstrators built in France and Japan, relying on its patented floating platform technology, the most cost competitive solution in the market. Its team, composed by more than 40 engineers, is globally recognized as one of the best technical team with a unique know-how and innovative approach. IDEOL is already engaged in different pre-commercial and commercial projects in France, Japan and California. It is the only European technology provider and the only foreign company having convinced the Japanese government and experts. Its technology is characterized by its extreme compactness and simplicity, its compatibility with the existing and the future extra-large wind turbines without modification, its construction either in concrete or in steel. LEADFLOAT aims to impose IDEOL’s solution as the market leader of floating wind by keeping its cost competitiveness advantage, leveraging on its demonstrators’ return of experience and securing early market share in key markets. It will contribute to keep Europe ahead and to positions its industry on the top of the new emerging floating-wind market over the competition from US and Japan.

Wind is one of the leading sources of renewables contributing to EU energy mix, and its exploitation is pivotal to meet many of next environmental and energy policy goals. Europe being one of the world technological leaders, its wind energy sector has evolved into an important industry providing hundreds of thousands of jobs. Due to the limitations of available installation sites onshore, offshore wind is becoming crucial to ensure the further growth of the sector. In this scenario, exploiting the vast wind resources in deeper waters using floating wind farms and developing the required technology will enhance EU’s economy and will contribute to achieve its green energy goals. FLOATECH aims at stimulating this transition by increasing the technical maturity and the cost competitiveness of floating offshore wind energy. This will be achieved by two types of actions. On the one hand, a fully-coupled, aero-hydro-servo-elastic design and simulation environment (named QBlade-Ocean) will be developed. The more advanced modelling theories will lead to a reduction of the uncertainties in the design process and then to more efficient, reliable and cost-effective floating wind turbines. On the other hand, two innovative control techniques will be introduced, i.e. the Active Wave-based feed-forward Control and the Active Wake Mixing, which will lead to an increase of the actual energy yield of floating wind farms. Wave tank and wind tunnel experiments, as well as the application to a utility-size floating wind turbine are foreseen as validation and demonstration methods. The consortium comprises five public research institutions with relevant skills in the field of offshore floating wind energy, and three industrial partners, two of which have been involved in the most recent developments of floating wind systems. An innovation advisory board including stakeholders such as certifiers, research and business networks will support the dissemination of the project results.

The focus of the project will be on floating wind turbines installed at water depths from 50m to about 200m. The consortium partners have chosen to focus on large wind turbines (in the region of 10MW), which are seen as the most effective way of reducing the Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE). The objective of the proposed project is two-fold: 1. Optimize and qualify, to a TRL5 level, two (2) substructure concepts for 10MW turbines. The chosen concepts will be taken from an existing list of four (4) TRL>4 candidates currently supporting turbines in the region of 5MW. The selection of the two concepts will be made based on technical, economical, and industrial criteria. An existing reference 10MW wind turbine design will be used throughout the project. 2. More generally, develop a streamlined and KPI-based methodology for the design and qualification process, focusing on technical, economical, and industrial aspects. This methodology will be supported by existing numerical tools, and targeted development and experimental work. It is expected that resulting guidelines/recommended practices will facilitate innovation and competition in the industry, reduce risks, and indirectly this time, contribute to a lower LCOE. End users for the project deliverables will be developers, designers and manufacturers, but also decision makers who need to evaluate a concept based on given constraints. The proposed project is expected to have a broad impact since it is not led by single group of existing business partners, focusing on one concept only. On the contrary, it will involve a strong consortium reflecting the value chain for offshore wind turbines: researchers, designers, classification societies, manufacturers, utilities. This will ensure that the project's outcomes suit the concrete requirements imposed by end-users.