Gazelle Wind Power, which has developed a modular floating offshore wind platform, has teamed up with renewable energy developer WAM Horizon to accelerate the creation of a pilot plant using what is described as Gazelle’s ‘breakthrough’ floating wind platform, in Aguçadoura, Portugal. WAM will provide Gazelle with strategic advisory services to successfully implement the project.
Portugal-based WAM Horizon is the holding company for WAM Investments, which focuses on developing renewable energy assets and has extensive experience supporting the offshore wind industry, including involvement in the 25 MW WindFloat Atlantic Project*, the first of its kind in Portugal.
Portugal will be an important destination for offshore wind and has an ambitious target of 10 GW by 2030. Gazelle’s lightweight, modular, and scalable solution is said to reduce costs, and can also utilise the existing port infrastructure to develop commercial projects in Portugal in the future.
“The innovative design behind the Gazelle platform makes it a very promising solution to drive the offshore wind industry into the future, supporting WAM Horizon’s long-term vision to enable offshore wind at a large scale”, said WAM Horizon’s chairman Adelino Costa Matos.
Gazelle Wind Power hopes to unlock the huge deep-water offshore wind market. The company’s durable hybrid floating platform is said to be a ‘disruptive’ technology, featuring a high stability attenuated pitch that surmounts the current barriers of buoyancy and geographic limitations while reducing costs and preserving fragile marine environments.
*The first of the three platforms of the WindFloat Atlantic project was successfully connected in December 2019, after installation of the 20 km cable to the substation in Viana do Castelo. It was the first floating wind farm in Continental Europe to supply energy to the electricity system. In May 2020 the project took another decisive step with the installation of the last of the three platforms off the coast of Viana de Castelo.
Image courtesy of Gazelle Wind Power
