Wind Energy – Floating Wind
PelaStar from the US and FibreMax, based in the Netherlands, have signed a Collaboration Agreement, formalizing their commitments to commercializing the PelaStar tension-leg platform (TLP) with the most advanced synthetic tendons in the industry.
PelaStar and FibreMax are long-time partners who have spent the last ten years working to develop the tendon cables for the PelaStar TLP.
With much of the initial R&D behind them, the partners are taking another step by formalizing the relationship and shifting focus to industrialization and local content readiness as the floating wind market starts on its path to utility-scale projects.
FibreMax has been producing the world’s strongest synthetic cables and supplying them to the offshore renewables industry since 2009. Their unique and patented production process uses endless winding technology with incorporated end terminations to continuously wind parallel fiber strands until the right cable stiffness and is reached. This creates cables with the most accurate stiffness and highest breaking load, very low stretch, and lowest diameter possible. With these cables stabilizing PelaStar, the platform will be equipped to maximize power production in the harshest deep-water environments.
“As our partnership with FibreMax has matured past R&D, we have seen them take significant, proactive steps in preparing for the commercial scale needs of project developers,” said Kris Volpenhein, PelaStar’s commercialization lead. “Specifically, setting up their technology, manufacturing capacity and localization plans to support growth in the key regions of the world that we are focused on. As we move into full scale industrialization, this holistic preparation is key to our supply chain robustness and will help us deliver on our commitments to our customers and local stakeholders.”
“Both PelaStar and FibreMax are true pioneers in floating offshore wind,” said FibreMax’s Director Renewable Energy Sander van Helvoort. “We have been working together on optimalizations and potential projects since 2011. As global floating wind opportunities are accelerating, we see the formalization of our partnership as a commitment to the project developers and local stakeholders that we actually can scale-up accordingly and are able to deliver the commercial size projects anywhere in the world.”
