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European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency
Project

SATHScale

Engineering and upscaling of new floating renewable wind energy platform

floating wind turbine

Renewable technologies are at the heart of the new energy systems, with offshore wind representing a significant future opportunity. The EU Strategy on Offshore Renewable Energy proposes to increase Europe's offshore wind capacity from its current level of 12 GW to at least 60 GW by 2030 and to 300 GW by 2050. Additional 40 GW will come from ocean energy and emerging technologies like floating wind.

SATHScale is based on DemoSATH pilot project, a regionally funded activity for the construction of a 2MW floating offshore wind turbine installed in the Biscay Marine Energy Platform test area, off the coast of Armintza in northern Spain. SATHScale aims at bringing to market Swinging Around Twin Hull (SATH) floating wind technology by scaling up DemoSATH prototype.

SATH technology represents a disruptive change over current floating solutions due to the use of different construction materials (concrete instead of steel), the Single Point Mooring configuration and the versatility of the design that makes it adaptable to different water depths. Thanks to these characteristics, the high levelized cost of energy (LCoE) of floating wind technology can be reduced, not only compared to the current floating systems but also to the fixed bottom offshore wind solutions. Setting up the fundamental conditions for future commercialisation of the SATH’s technology will play a fundamental role for costs reduction.

SATHScale project is working on the industrialized fabrication system for mass production using prefabricating technology. This includes the manufacturing process, transportation, installation, commissioning, operations and maintenance and dismantling of the floating platform. Moreover, SATHScale developed a full program of monitoring that will gather data on the open-sea floating offshore wind turbine demonstrator (DemoSATH) for a two-year period. This will ensure a comprehensive monitoring coverage of the system and will tackle the current lack of operational data. The information collected will help optimizing the technology as well as the operation and maintenance logistics. 

SAITEC expectations are to expand their business and to gain recognition of the SATH Trademark in the wind floating market. In a first stage, the aim is to consolidate their position in Europe in countries as France or United Kingdom, and on a later stage to introduce SATH technology in strategical Asian countries as Taiwan or Japan.

If you want to know a bit more about the SATHScale project, check the World Circular Economy Forum side-event dedicated to Circular Design for the Sustainability of the Offshore Renewable Energy on the event page.

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