LISBON: Portugal’s government has approved a resolution to enable the installation of an offshore wind park to generate electricity off Viana do Castelo, in the north of the country. This forms part of a project that recently successfully concluded five years of tests, according to the company overseeing it.
“The aim is thus to realise the pre-commercial project to produce electricity known as Windfloat through the creation of conditions to assure its linking to the public electricity grid and its licensing by 18 December of 2016, as well as to foster the relocation of the pilot wave [power] zone situated off São Pedro de Moel to Viana do Castelo, with a view to revitalising it,” the government said in a statement.
The coordinator of the wind-power project in question is EDP Renováveis, the renewables unit of Energias de Portugal, in a consortium with technology partner Principle Power, Repsol, risk capital provider Portugal Ventures, and the engineering company A. Silva Matos.
In June, EDP said in a statement that the five-year test phase of the project had been concluded, and that the next phase – of developing what it described as “the first floating offshore wind park with this technology”, dubbed WindFloat Atlantic” – was now to be started. The future wind park, it said, “already has commitments of national and European research and development funds”.
At the time, EDP innovation chief Luís Manuel was quoted as describing WindFloat as “the most successful research and development project in the area of offshore renewables in Portugal, positioning the country and the partners involved in [a position of] world leadership” in this type of technology. “We believe that in future there will be many more floating offshore [wind] parks in the world,” he said.
According to EDP, the tests over the last five years “proved the reliability of the technological solution in adverse climatic conditions, having resisted waves of more than 16 metres and winds of more than 60 knots”. Over the period, WindFloat generated and injected into the electricity grid more than 17 GWh, according to the company.
