Offshore staff
TELDE, CANARY ISLANDS, Spain – The PivotBuoy project, developed by X1 Wind in collaboration with nine industry and R&D leaders, has reportedly finalized its offshore demonstration. According to the developers, the project brought several important results.
The Spanish firm’s X30 platform was tested in full operational conditions at the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (Plataforma Oceánica de Canarias, or PLOCAN) from October 2022 to May 2023.
During the seven-month demonstration, the device became the world’s first fully functional floating wind tension leg platform. The unit fed its electricity to PLOCAN’s platform via a 1.4-km 20kV subsea cable.
X1 Wind CEO Alex Raventos said that the recently published results illustrate excellent performance across a broad range of parameters including platform stability, passive alignment, structural behavior and power production. “The PivotBuoy Project marked an important phase in the development of our innovative technology,” he said. “It allowed us to retrieve large amounts of data for a sustained period of time in full operational conditions. This data was collected from multiple sensors installed across the platform through a dedicated and proprietary SCADA called Floating Management System. These findings have provided crucial insights which are now being incorporated into X1 Wind’s ongoing commercial-scale projects, including the NextFloat Project.”
The most striking result, developers said, was that data showed good alignment with the wind using its passive orientation system. The platform showed better alignment than publicly available data for traditional active yaw systems for strong winds (>7.5m/s) and similar alignment for lower wind speeds (<7.5m/s).
In terms of power production, energy generated by the modified Vestas V29 – which operates in a downwind configuration – was well aligned with theoretical models, with no sign of power loss or increased 3P vibration due to the tripod shadow. The results reportedly confirmed that X1 Wind’s streamlined tripod arrangement eliminates the known drawbacks typically associated with downwind operation.
In addition, the platform overcame several harsh storms, with maximum wave heights reaching 6.7 meters, equivalent to more than 20 meters in full-scale. During these extreme events, the unit behaved well with motions and accelerations matching the predictions in simulation models.
The PivotBuoy consortium is comprised of nine partners from five different countries (X1 Wind, EDP, DNV, INTECSEA, DTU, WavEC, PLOCAN, ESM, and DEGIMA). The project aimed to demonstrate the PivotBuoy mooring system configuration which combines the advantages of a single point mooring with a small TLP mooring system, allowing the platform to reach deeper waters and minimizing the footprint and impact on the seabed.
10.17.2023
