4C is now TGS

We are excited to announce a significant milestone in 4C Offshore's journey. Our integration into the TGS family marks the beginning of a new era in offshore wind market intelligence.

Learn what this means for you!

'World’s first' floating wind innovation centre opens in Aberdeen

By: Chloe Emanuel 18/03/2024 ORE Catapult

Corporate Floating General Turbines Windfarms

Located in the heart of Aberdeen’s Energy Transition Zone, ORE Catapult’s £9 million National Floating Wind Innovation Centre (FLOWIC), delivered in collaboration with ETZ Limited, is designed to help supercharge the development of floating offshore wind technology in the UK, with funding from both the Scottish Government and Innovate UK.

Floating offshore wind represents a huge economic opportunity, with more than 19 GW of potential projects in the pipeline through the ScotWind Leasing process, a new leasing round on the horizon in the Celtic Sea, and the prospect of transferring skills and knowledge from oil and gas to aid the Just Transition. The INTOG leasing round has also established an opportunity for floating wind to contribute to decarbonising north sea energy production.

Through the successful roll out of this pipeline of activity, industry has estimated that floating offshore wind has the potential to deliver over £43.bn in UK gross value add (GVA) by 2050, and create more than 29,000 jobs.

FLOWIC provides unique facilities for companies to develop and derisk many of the technologies essential to the future success of the sector, with significant demand from industry for use of these services to capitalise on the unrivalled pipeline of floating offshore wind projects in UK waters.

Speaking as he officially opened the centre, First Minister Humza Yousaf said: "Delivering our net zero ambitions will require economic and societal transformation, with sustained investment, both public and private, to achieve it. We know the scale of the change needed. The National Floating Wind Innovation Centre embodies the spirit of collaboration that will drive the offshore wind industry forward."

The array of equipment housed in FLOWIC includes:

- A large-scale dynamic cable flex fatigue rig, designed and built specifically for use in this facility, to test and validate the strength, performance and reliability of dynamic subsea cables – a critical component of floating offshore wind farms.
- A large-scale anchor test rig to test dynamic anchoring systems - another unique element of floating wind technology.
- A floating offshore wind scale motion simulator, or Hexapod, capable of providing dynamic testing of scale structures and electrical & mooring connections in a simulated marine environment.
- A virtual reality studio to allow engineers to envisage scenarios and challenges likely to be faced in the build out of future floating wind turbines.

As part of the First Minister’s tour, he will meet with ORE Catapult’s team of in-house experts, along with leading representatives from across the offshore renewable energy sector, and will also hear from locally based supply chain companies on how this facility can help them tap into the potential offered by floating offshore wind.

For more information about offshore wind farm projects across the globe, click here.

Premium

4C Offshore Premium, our most popular subscription, gives you full access to use the 4C Offshore WebApp which includes exclusive offshore wind, transmission and vessel reports, news and downloads.

Request a 30 minute Demo

'World’s first' floating wind innovation centre opens in Aberdeen

Back to News

Trending News!