Saitec Engineering awarded with 2.4M€ to accelerate floating wind commercial projects

Saitec Engineering has been awarded with 2.4M€ funding by the European Commission "Blue Economy Window" call. The European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) launched in November 2019 a call for proposals named `BlueInvest Grants: Investing in Blue Innovation´ with a total investment of 22M€ to develop and bring to market new products, services, and business models for small and medium enterprises that could ultimately improve market readiness of technologies and/or maritime services.

The funding for SATHScale project will allow to address the challenge of bringing to market SATH floating wind technology through scaling-up the prototype from the technology validation and demonstration in a relevant environment to Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) required for commercial products in the relevant markets, i.e., to industrial readiness and maturity for market introduction, exploiting real experiences of the ongoing open-sea 2MW demonstrator that will be deployed at BiMEP (Biscay Marine Energy Platform) in Biscay (Spain).

Carlos Garrido-Mendoza, Head of R&D, said: “SATHScale is an important project for Saitec with a view of industrialize, internationalize and scaling-up SATH technology. SATHScale will help us to move forward to the required commercial maturity level through an open-sea experience, which is essential to fully understand the challenges in device performance, survivability and reliability prior to market take-up."

Prefabrication is one of the main advantages of this technology. For that reason, SATHScale will focus on the development of an industrialized fabrication system for mass production, covering the manufacturing process, transportation, installation, commissioning, O&M and dismantling of the floating wind platform. The portability of the manufacturing will allow the use of local labour to ease the management of projects and to enhance the local supply chain.

Another key point is the design optimization in terms of cost and dynamic behaviour. Getting feedback from real experience data and then checking this against the values obtained through conservative calculation will provide relevant information to be applied in the following design processes.

Risk reduction of the technology innovations and reducing unplanned activities, improving health and safety, and reducing costs will be achieved by the optimization of operations and maintenance logistics data and analytics of DemoSATH. A 2MW prototype to be installed in open-sea test area off Basque Coast.

And finally, the project aims the technology internationalization through branches in markets with floating wind high potential as offshore wind is making a great progress on the target of carbon emission neutrality in many countries.