For floating offshore wind to move forward from the current demonstration phase, the industry needs to be cost-competitive, according to Clement Mochet, Commercial Director at Vryhof.
“We are still in early stages of development. To move forward we need to be cost-competitive and we are not there yet,” said Mochet at the Offshore Energy Exhibition & Conference (OEEC) in Amsterdam.
At the session titled Offshore Transport, Installation and Removal , Mochet discussed the floating offshore wind industry in a shared presentation with Yvan Leyni, Engineering and Projects Director at Bourbon Offshore.
Although floating wind has an existing and mature supply chain, there are challenges in moving to the construction of full floating offshore wind farms with heavy logistics being one of the obstacles, Mochet and Leyni said.
According to the two speakers, mooring systems and installation are a couple, however only market visibility can bring cost-reduction to mooring systems.
During the session, Bourbon and Vryhof announced their cooperation for the 25MW WindFloat Atlantic floating wind farm in Portugal, for which Bourbon recently secured an installation contract.
The other panelists included Edward Heerema from Allseas, Jack Spaan from Boskalis, Wout Janssens from Jumbo and Kevin van de Leur from Van Oord.