Odfjell Oceanwind and Prodtex have established a joint venture, Windsteel Technologies, to scale production capacity of floating wind foundations, with an eye on opening the venture’s first facility by 2027.
The venture hopes to develop factories tailored toward floating foundation production and is set to act as a hub for delivering the foundations to the market and work in collaboration with the industry supply chain.
Odfjell Oceanwind and Prodtex have previously worked together in developing automated production and assembly methods for Odfjell Oceanwind’s Deepsea floating wind foundations.
“Production of floating wind foundations of the size and scale needed to develop gigawatt floating wind parks will require factories, and not yards like we are used to see from the oil and gas and ship building industries,” says Per Lund, CEO of Odfjell Oceanwind and chairman of Windsteel Technologies.
“These factories will be highly specialized with production and assembly lines that are customized to produce foundation designs with relatively similar structural components. Very much like we see in car or airplane factories. If floating offshore wind shall become a relevant source of energy in the future, we need to dramatically reduce the costs, but also increase the scale. And we need to do this without sacrificing quality. These offshore structures for wind turbines of 15 MW and larger shall be able to withstand extreme loads for more than 30 years without having to be towed back for repairs. Failures based on poor quality welds or surface treatment are simply not acceptable.”
