Wind energy continues to be the largest and fastest growing renewable energy source in Scotland, with 73% of Scotland’s renewable electricity coming from wind in 2021. Within wind, offshore wind farms are considered the largest untapped potential for future energy resources. With viable offshore wind sites thought to have double the potential of onshore sites. This is where FloWave becomes an essential tool for the advancement of this critical renewable technology. FloWave regularly tests designs for offshore wind turbines and how they react to the harsh climate that exists out at sea, FloWave is the best place for these tests as it creates the closest simulations of real ocean conditions available.
EnerOcean
EnerOcean's W2Power is a patented floating wind power solution consisting of a triangular semisubmersible platform supporting a pair of wind turbines. At full size it is currently (2021) rated between 11 and 16MW depending on the choice of commercial turbines. A 12-MW scaled down device was tested in FloWave (2015) in one of our earliest test programmes, taking advantage of our ability to produce complex directional sea states in combination with current. The W2Power platform has since gone on to field deployment as a 1/6 scale prototype (2019) off the coast of Gran Canaria, where it survived seven storms with wave heights equivalent to 24m.
IDCORE
IDCORE is an EPSRC funded doctoral training centre aiming to train 50 Engineering Doctorate (EngD) students in offshore renewable energy over a nine year period admitting approximately ten new students each year for five years from September 2019. FloWave have sponsored several IDCORE students and currently have three full-time research engineers at the facility, Anita Nunes Leite, Katie Smith and Ailsa McMillan. Our IDCORE students are primarily working on EngD theses relating to offshore wind technology and hydrodynamics of floating offshore wind turbines, such as Anita’s project looking at effects of wind, wave and current loads on floating turbines.
