EnerOcean’s W2Power floating wind technology tested on PLOCAN’s Test Site awarded with the “Atlantic Project Awards 2020”

EnerOcean’s W2Power floating wind technology demonstration project has been awarded with the prestigious “Atlantic Project Awards 2020”. The “Wind Integrated Platform for 10+ MW” project has been funded by the European initiative H2020 DemoWind.

The project has been coordinated by EnerOcean (Spain), with the participation of INGETEAM (Spain), GHENOVA (Spain) and Tension Technology International (UK). The W2 Power was tested on the Test Site of the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN).

The Atlantic Project Awards are designed to honour outstanding success stories, achieved by projects in the geographical area covered by the Atlantic Strategy and that are related to the implementation of the Atlantic Action Plan, which is funded by the EU. This is the first time this distinction has been awarded in the marine energy section. The conference was streamed live and was the first public event in which the Atlantic Strategy 2.0 was announced in order to promote the Blue Economy and the European Green Deal.

Pedro Mayorga, CEO and founding partner of EnerOcean, pointed out that “it is a great honour to receive this award that recognizes the success of the offshore demonstration of our floating wind power solution W2Power. This award has been obtained thanks to our partners and funding agencies, which throughout all these years have invested on the development of quality R&D, including the EU, CDTI, MITECO, BEIS, and different Board Agencies of Andalusia and the Government of the Canary Islands.

The project concluded successfully after four months of open sea tests next to the island of Gran Canaria and has been the first floating wind platform in Spanish waters and the first multiturbine platform in the world to reach this level of technological development (TRL6) at open sea, managing to survive seven storms with maximum waves equivalent to more than 24 meters, according to data collected with a measuring buoy specially installed just 270 meters from the prototype. During the test campaign, it was not necessary to carry out any maintenance, intervention or emergency access, and the subsequent inspection at the shipyard did not show any damage, which allows planning new test campaigns to study multi-use applications or advanced monitoring and control among others.

The installation and disconnection processes were carried out in a single day, using means available in the vast majority of ports, demonstrating the simplicity and efficiency of the design and the procedures proposed.

Ana Mayorga, responsible for the installation of the prototype, said that “the success of this project has been made possible by the support of all the suppliers and subcontractors who have been by our side and have contributed with great enthusiasm during these ten years that we have been working on this solution, such as the Universities of Edinburgh, Cádiz and Malaga, PLOCAN, ITC, BOLUDA and ASTICAN among many others ”.

The presence of EnerOcean, which was created and has its headquarters in Malaga, continues to grow in the Canary Islands, where in addition to reinforcing the team of Las Palmas, it is making progress in preparing all the necessary documentation for the installation of a first park of 48MW.

With the collaboration of its partners, such as Inrigo AS, ISATI S.L. and Ghenova SA, as well as its academic and industrial partners worldwide, EnerOcean hopes to achieve full global commercialization of its technology, in two versions with total powers of up to 12 MW (option proposed in the Canary Islands) and more than 20 MW per platform and connection point, in a later phase, making W2Power the most cost-efficient floating wind solution.


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