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“Local teams will now enter the last phase of a test and verification programme which started with the platform installation in November 2022, in preparation of the technology industrialisation and certification for commercial scale projects currently under development,” according to X1 Wind.
The power got no further than the laboratory, which is 1.5km from the shore, as it is not connected to the island’s public grid. The turbine is run intermittently, when there are people at the lab. “Although the prototype and turbine are designed and prepared to run continuously, the test plan will only operate the X30 unit during the necessary days to validate the power curve and platform behaviour,” X1 Wind told Electronics Weekly.
Company CTO Carlos Casanovas conceived the floating wind concept while studying at MIT in 2012. X30 has a single anchor on the sea bed and passively trails like a wind vane to orient the turbine appropriately. As such, the turbine has been designed to trail behind its nacelle in a down-wind configuration – the turbine in this case is an adapted 225kW Vestas V29 up-wind turbine.
Wind-shadowing by the support structure tends to reduce the output power of down-wind turbines, so the X30’s metal work is shaped to minimise this.
Spain’s Plocan laboratory, off the north east coast of Gran Canara
The EU-backed project, called PivotBuoy, is also testing the slip rings and other rotating parts needed to prevent tangling or twist building up in the mooring wire and power cable.
Prior to transmitting power, an initial round of tests validated hydrodynamic behaviour and storm survival.
PivotBuoy officially closes at the end of this month, but X1 Wind has requested an extension until May for further testing before decommissioning the prototype. Beyond this, the company is a member of the consortium delivering the European Commission’s NextFloat project, to deploy a 6MW floating wind turbine at France’s ‘Mistral’ test site in the Mediterranean.
