The Anonymous Widower

Work Starts On World’s Largest Floating Solar Project, Part of RWE’s OranjeWind

The title of this post, is the same as that of this article on offshoreWIND.biz.

This is the sub-heading.

The Nautical SUNRISE consortium partners have commenced the project whose goal is to facilitate research and development of offshore floating solar systems and its components. The project aims to integrate a 5 MW offshore floating solar system within RWE’s OranjeWind, a wind farm to be built 53 kilometres off the Dutch coast.

These three paragraphs outline the project.

Research and development on the offshore floating solar (OFS) systems and its components of the EUR 8.4 million project, supported by EUR 6.8 million of the Horizon Europe programme, kicked off in December 2023.

The project will enable the large-scale deployment and commercialisation of offshore floating solar systems in the future, both as standalone systems and integrated into offshore wind farms.

The project aims to design, build, and showcase a 5 MW OFS system using the modular solution of the Dutch floating company SolarDuck.

Note.

  1. It’s only the fourth of March and this is the second floating solar project of the month.
  2. The first was SolarDuck, Green Arrow Capital And New Developments S.R.L. Sign Collaboration Agreement For A Grid-Scale Offshore Hybrid Wind-Solar Project In Italy.
  3. I can understand Italy, but surely a solar farm in the Dutch waters of the North Sea, is being at least slightly optimistic.

But the home page of the Oranjewind web site, does have a mission statement of Blueprint For The New Generation Of Offshore Wind Farms.

Under a heading of The Perfect Match, this is said.

RWE’s OranjeWind offshore wind farm will be located 53 kilometers from the Dutch coast. To tackle the challenges of fluctuating power generation from wind and flexible energy demand, RWE has developed a blueprint for the integration of offshore wind farms in the Dutch energy system.

A combination of smart innovations and investments will be used to realise this perfect match between supply and demand.

Under Innovations At OranjeWind, this is said.
In order to realise system integration and accelerate the energy transition, RWE is working together with a number of innovators on new developments in offshore wind farms. The company is realising and testing these innovations in the OranjeWind wind farm.

These innovations include offshore floating solar, a subsea lithium-ion battery, LiDAR power forecasting system and a subsea hydro storage power plant off-site.

These technologies have their own sections, which give more information.

The web site also says this about knowledge from OranjeWind.

There is a lot to learn in an innovative project such as OranjeWind. While developing the wind farm, RWE started the OranjeWind Knowledge programme. This programme aims to generate and share knowledge to accelerate the energy transition.

In strong partnerships with TNO and Dutch universities, research is carried out in parallel to the development and operation of OranjeWind. By sharing research results, lessons learned, and relevant in-house expertise, RWE aims to close knowledge gaps and provide valuable insights in key focus areas for system integration. The generated knowledge will become openly available to educational and research institutes, governments and the market.

To ensure the dissemination of knowledge, RWE will actively partner with educational institutions of all levels across the Netherlands. These partnerships allow RWE to share its expertise and provide the future workforce with the knowledge and skills needed to enable the energy transition.

It certainly appears that RWE intends to get as much out of this project as they can.

I don’t think that they can be criticised for that objective.

 

March 4, 2024 Posted by | Energy, Energy Storage | , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment