Floating Wind
Gazelle Wind Power recently announced that it has developed and tested a breakthrough floating platform design for 18MW+ wind turbines in extreme offshore conditions.
The design is being developed as part of Gazelle’s work with a major Asian utility on a large-scale floating offshore wind development at a typhoon-prone site.
Global performance simulations indicate that Gazelle’s new platform design can support 18 MW+ turbines under severe wind, wave, and current conditions.
Costing exercises also indicate that the new design could deliver 44% lower CAPEX and 52% lower LCOE than the benchmark semi-submersible designs assessed.
The new design retains the core principles of Gazelle’s technology, combining a central counterweight with three Articulated Mooring Frames (AMFs) with near-vertical mooring lines to provide passive restoring force as wind, waves and currents act on the platform.
This helps control platform motion and mooring loads without an active ballast system.
In the new configuration, Gazelle has refined the platform around a tripod support structure, upgraded AMFs, and revised hull geometry.
The changes improve hydrodynamic performance, mooring flexibility and load distribution, while reducing structural weight and increasing damage tolerance. Together, they are designed to support larger turbines and commercial-scale deployment.
The study assessed the new design under both normal and extreme environmental conditions, including survival and power-production cases.
The platform was assessed for a typhoon-prone site with a 50-year extreme wind speed of 59.8 m/s at a hub height of 155 metres and a 50-year significant wave height of 14.2 metres.
The simulations showed controlled platform behaviour under these conditions. Roll and pitch angles remained below 5 degrees, while accelerations at the top of the tower and tower-base loads remained within the project’s design criteria.
These results therefore indicate that Gazelle’s constant-load mooring system can maintain low platform motions while providing lower mooring loads than a TLP and a smaller floater footprint than conventional semi-submersible, barge or spar designs.
