GE working on 12-MW floating wind turbine with Glosten

General Electric (NYSE:GE) announced on Monday its researchers are working on a 12-MW floating offshore wind turbine concept with US marine design firm Glosten.

The partners are coupling a 12-MW GE turbine with Glosten’s tension-leg platform floating wind turbine foundation, called PelaStar.

Under an ongoing two-year, USD-4-million (EUR 3.3m) project, GE Research and Glosten are developing advanced controls to support the 12-MW floating offshore wind turbine. The project is part of the Aerodynamic Turbines Lighter and Afloat with Nautical Technologies and Integrated Servo-control (ATLANTIS) programme of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) at the US Department of Energy.

GE Research is featuring the project at the annual ARPA-E Innovation Summit, which is taking place virtually this week.

“Through our ATLANTIS project with ARPA-E, we will be concurrently designing the controls system with the design of the floating structure itself to advance Floating Offshore Wind Energy toward becoming a future commercially viable solution,” said Rogier Blom, the project’s principal investigator.

Co-designing the controls system with the tower and floating platform is expected to help the team achieve their ambition of creating a light-weight floating turbine with up to 35% less mass in the tower and the floating platform, which would lead to a lower levelised cost of energy (LCOE).

Floating turbines unlock offshore wind generation beyond the areas suitable for fixed-bottom wind turbines. Citing the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL), GE said that this would greatly increase the US offshore wind potential to more than 7,000 TWh per year, well above the total annual US energy consumption of 4,000 TWh.

(USD 1.0 = EUR 0.819)

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