Wind Energy – Floating Lidar
Copenhagen Offshore Partners (COP) has announced the Ichnusa Wind Power Project has deployed a floating lidar to monitor wind and wave conditions off the Sardinian coast where the project will be developed.
COP is leading development for Ichnusa on behalf of the project’s owners, Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners through its Flagship Funds and GreenIT, the joint venture owned 51% by Plenitude (Eni) and 49% by CDP Equity.
The floating lidar campaign, the first of its kind for an offshore wind project in Sardinia, is being managed by Akrocean. Monitoring will last for twelve to fourteen months, and data collected will inform design of Ichnua’s foundations, cables, and wind turbine generators, as well as ensure protection of the local environment.
As part of the campaign, CNR (Italy’s National Research Center) will deploy additional equipment on the buoy to support research and reporting activities in the Mediterranean, including underwater camera monitoring of microplastics in the water column.
The Ichnusa Wind Power Project is a 504MW floating project planned approximately 35 kilometers off the coast of Sardinia and will contribute toward the Italian government’s target of 20GW of operational wind by 2030. The project is also designed to support local supply chain development by the second half of the decade.
Ichnusa is part of a larger, almost 3GW, floating portfolio COP is leading development for in Italy. The portfolio, which could power approximately 2.5 million Italian households, includes the 500MW Tyrrhenian project located in Latium off the coast of Civitavecchia, 3 projects off the coast of Sardinia including Ichnusa, the 500MW Nurax project, and the 1,000MW Poseidon project, and the 250MW 7SeasMed project located in Sicily off the coast of Marsala.
