A special moment for our Buccaneer, Next Ocean. They successfully installed their WavePredictor for the first time on board a floating Offshore Wind Turbine. Together with the team of BW Ideol, they completed the installation last week on board the FLOATGEN FOWT near St. Nazaire (France). Another promising step in the FLOATECH H2020 Offshore Wind Project!
The WavePredictor
The WavePredictor is a product that uses radar technology to observe the surrounding ocean waves. The advanced algorithms in Next Ocean’s software can turn any X-band radar into a powerful remote wave sensor, capable of predicting waves and resulting ship motions minutes ahead of time. This also works with ordinary navigation radars, which makes it a very scalable product.
A floating turbine
Where the WavePredictor is mainly used on ships to provide the crew with the information they need to operate with confidence in challenging seas, the technology is now also used on a floating wind turbine. Karel Roozen, co-founder of Next Ocean, told us why this is so unique. “With the WavePredictor we aim to increase the efficiency of the floating offshore turbine and deliver more output. Motions of the floating wind turbine caused by the waves negatively influence the efficiency of the turbine. Predicting the incoming waves allows for the possibility of wave-based feed-forward motion control which is currently being developed by TU Delft. Continuous micro-adjustments of the pitch of the turbine blades can cause the turbine to be more upright in the waves, and thus more efficient.”
With Next Ocean we always like to explore new opportunities. This pilot is a way to see if our product, the WavePredictor can contribute to more efficient offshore wind turbines.
Karel Roozen, Co-Founder Next Ocean
“With Next Ocean we focus on our solutions for ships, but with our research background we always like to explore new opportunities. In the end we like to contribute to a safer and more efficient offshore sector as a whole. This pilot is a way to see if our product, the WavePredictor can contribute to this mission via increased FOWT efficiency. We will see what the future holds.”