Lead Technology:
Floating Wind Turbine – Single Anchor Mooring
Floating Wind Potential
The Floating Offshore Wind Turbine (FOWT) is supported by its floating foundation which is positioned at sea by a mooring system anchored to the seabed. This technology unlocks over 80% of global offshore wind resources, that are situated in waters too deep (>60 m) for the fixed-bottom turbines. It is projected that the installed FOWT capacity will exceed 210 GW by 2050, with rapid scale-up from 2030.
Main barriers
High cost is delaying the fast growth of floating wind. The CAPEX of a floating wind farm is approx 50% more than that of a fixed-bottom one, and 2/3 of the increase is due to the floating foundation, including the mooring system.
In current designs, each FOWT mooring system comprises of at least 3 mooring legs, and consumes typically 2000-3000 tons of heavy-duty mooring chains. With the rapid expansion of floating wind from 2030, the mooring chains will become a primary chokepoint of supply chain – there will be insufficient production facilities, nor sufficient installation ships, for the mooring chains to meet the future demand (which would be >10 times the current consumption from the oil & gas industry).
Our Solution:
Single Anchor Mooring + Weathervane Enabling Techniques
- Using single anchor and mooring leg, and allowing floater weathervane around the anchoring point
- Proven concept from offshore oil industry, re-engineered for floating wind – much larger load and 360° full-life weathervane
- Parallel 3 lines of chains in 1x mooring leg – better redundancy than current designs
- Gravity-based (concrete) or piled anchor – minimized seabed interference and suitable for all soil conditions
- Integrated arrangement of electrical cabling
- Benefits weathervane: floater steel reduction >10%; mooring load reduction ~50%, if combined with V-shaped bow
Value Proposition
□ Large savings on materials, installation, maintenance & decommissioning
- ~70% mooring system material costs, or €6.5M per FOWT unit for base case
- ~60% mooring system installation cost, or €3.8M per floating unit on average
- ~9% CAPEX and ~10% LCOE on a typical floating wind farm
□ Mitigation of supply chain constraints on mooring system
- ~85% less mooring chain steel, or 2500t per FOWT unit for the base case
- Much less support ships required during installation & tow-to-port overhauls
□ Less impact to seabed infrastructures and environment
- Less interference to seabed and surrounding water, less impact to fisheries
- Anchor surfaced with ECOncrete can be beneficial to ecology
Development Status
The system performance has been successfully demonstrated through numerical analyses. It recently triumphed in the contest of MARIN’s SME Free Basin Time 2026, and a model test of the system is set for November 2026.
A FOWT floater developer has acknowledged the benefits of SAM, especially its effectiveness in shallow waters with significant loads, and is currently exploring how to incorporate SAM into their design.
We are engaging with industrial expert and manufacturer to finalize and verify the dynamic cable arrangement.
Our Service
- Concept/basic design of the mooring system
- Hardware supply of key mechanical elements. Click here for more info.