The main objectives of the European MooringSense project are to reduce operating and maintenance costs by up to 10-15% and improve the energy yield of floating wind turbines used for offshore wind power generation by 2-3%. To achieve this, the consortium, led by the CTC Technology Centre, is developing a series of novel enabling technologies, which the project’s Advisory Board has highlighted as of great relevance to boosting floating offshore wind.

The MooringSense partners have recently had the third meeting with this body, whose main mission is to closely follow the project’s development and advise the consortium to ensure the future exploitation of the results and innovations achieved. Dragados Offshore, Siemens Gamesa, National Reniewable Energy Laboratory , DNV GL y Film Ocean are the expert companies that make up the Advisory Board and contribute to aligning the research, so the project results respond to the challenges and needs of the market.

During the meeting, the Advisory Board reaffirmed that the project was on the right track and that the technologies being developed to improve floating offshore wind energy efficiency are highly relevant.

The body highlighted the operational advantage of the SmartSensor, a smart device developed to monitor the movement of floating platforms, which is already being tested in a real maritime environment. The innovation comes from combining structural life monitoring technology and Digital Twins to determine the loads on mooring lines.

In this regard, the Advisory Board emphasised Digital Twins to optimise the definition of strategies that determine the structural integrity of platforms. This technology allows for a real-time update of the mooring systems, which provides information on their remaining service life.

The Advisory Board also highlighted the challenge of implementing a structural health monitoring system in a marine environment -offshore wind platforms, a very new environment for this technology-. Developing this tool will be an important step in monitoring the turbine’s operating environment, thus helping to detect anomalies and potential errors in the platform’s behaviour.

The MooringSense consortium will continue to push forward with determination in the development and implementation of these technologies to achieve the next milestones of the project.