http://www.energyefficiencynews.com/articles/i/5195/?cid=3

US wind developer Principle Power and partners Energias de Portugal (EDP), Repsol, A. Silva Matos (ASM), Vestas and InovCapital have inaugurated Portugal's first offshore wind turbine.

The Vestas v80 2.0 MW turbine rests on an innovative floating foundation called WindFloat located 5 km off the Portuguese coast at Aguçadoura.

The turbine produces enough electricity for some 1300 homes and has already produced more than 1.7 GWh.

The turbine is also the first offshore turbine to be installed at sea without the use of any heavy lifting vessels or piling equipment, having been assembled and pre-commissioned on land first and tugged into place.

The partners in the project believe the WindFloat technology bring a 'new era' in offshore wind energy by allowing the best wind resources to be exploited regardless of water depth.

The onshore fabrication and commissioning approach can also reduce cost and risk substantially, they say.

"We see the WindFloat technology as unique and pioneering," says José Luis Bernal Catalan of Repsol." Its most outstanding characteristic is the fact that the whole structure, including the turbine, can be built and/or assembled on land and then transported to the operation site by a simple tug. We are confident that in the near future this technology will enable us to develop offshore wind generation projects in areas with high wind resources without the present restriction of the depth of the seabed."

The development is part of the Windplus joint venture between the partners, now joined by Repsol, which has been subsidised by the Innovation Support Fund (Fundo de Apoio à Inovação - FAI).

The venture is now in a position to move to the next phase of the project, which will ultimately see a pre-commercial array of turbines with a capacity of at least 25 MW. Potential funding for the European Commission's NER300 fund will support a second phase of the project demonstrating the scalability of the WindFloat design.