Floating wind factory? Principle Power links with South Korean shipyard

Principle Power has signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korean shipyard group HSG Sungdong to advance serial manufacturing of the former's WindFloat semi-submersible floating wind foundations in the country.

The non-exclusive MoU covers engineering cooperation with the objective of achieving mass production and assembly of the WindFloat technologies and furthering the development of a sustainable domestic supply chain in South Korea, according to a statement released today (Thursday) by Principle Power.

“Principle Power collaborates with partners globally to help them prepare for the serial manufacturing and delivery of WindFloat foundations," said Lúcio Rodrigues, head of supply chain and procurement for Principle Power.

"Through this agreement, we will provide HSG Sungdong with high-quality inputs on WindFloat design, specifications, and lessons learned to support their efforts to optimise their facilities and processes for the fabrication and assembly of floating wind foundations cost-effectively and at scale.”

Principle Power has gone much further than most other suppliers of floating wind technology in terms of seeing its projects in the water.

The company's WindFloat foundations host 75MW of capacity on pre-commercial projects in Portugal and Scotland, with another 30MW under construction in France.

Principle Power is positioned to provide its floating platforms for two gigawatt-scale projects off the coast of South Korea's Ulsan City.

The first is the 1.3GW Korea Floating Wind (KFWind) project, where Ocean Winds and Aker Offshore Wind bought a majority interest in 2019.

The second is for Haewoori 2 and 3, a pair of 500MW floating wind arrays where a Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners fund awarded the main front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract to Norway’s Aker Solutions in February, with Principle Power in place to design the floating system and mooring.

With a third project in the conceptual engineering phase, the three Haewoori Offshore Wind arrays couldprovide South Korea with 1.5GW of capacity.

“With Principle Power’s extensive global track-record and operating experience in floating wind, and HSG Sungdong's formidable manufacturing capabilities, we are working together to build optimised delivery scenarios for floating wind projects in Korea and export markets that use local expertise and existing shipyard capabilities,” Rodrigues said.

Principle Power had already been working with South Korea's HSG Sungdong yard to develop a blueprint showing a detailed simulation of workflow for WindFloat F, a version of the hull that uses a hexagonal rather than tubular geometry in a flat-panel and pontoon-based solution.

Jinsang Lee, Chief Executive Officer for HSG Sungdong commented: “This MoU between HSG Sungdong and Principle Power targets the world’s first mass-production of floating offshore wind substructure by combining the strengths of both companies.”

“The goal of the two companies is to establish a supply system ready to deliver industrial scale floating offshore wind projects by combining the technological experiences of 75MW floating offshore wind farm that Principle Power has already implemented globally and HSG Sungdong's optimised manufacturing facilities.”

According to Jinsang Lee, HSG Sungdong and Principle Power will work together “to transform the substructure production paradigm in the offshore wind market.”

To reach its goal of deploying 14.3GW of offshore wind capacity by 2030 , the Korean government has implemented an annual auction system offering fixed-price contracts for offshore wind projects that includes a renewable energy certificate multiplier to help kickstart development of a domestic floating offshore wind industry.

Government auctions are scheduled for the third quarter of 2024 for the first floating projects in Korea, with another one expected in 2025.

"Developers and the supply chain are committed to establishing floating offshore wind capacity provided that off-take award conditions are supported by realistic price levels and national policies and regulations allow projects to progress on a predictable schedule," Principle Power commented.