A diver. Mooring lines. Precision under water.
Behind the scenes of the TouchWind floating wind turbine installation.
For the mooring of the turbine, a professional diving team was deployed to connect the mooring lines to the anchors on the lakebed — a critical step carried out below the surface.
The floating turbine is secured using steel and polyester mooring lines connected to concrete deadweight anchors, which are outfitted with 3D printed reefs of Coastruction to stimulate ecology in the lake.
Integrated load shackles continuously measure the forces in the mooring lines. These measurements provide direct insight into the loads transferred through the mooring system to the floating platform, and therefore into the conditions acting on the turbine itself during operation.
With installation completed, the project has now entered the in-water testing phase at Fieldlab Green Economy Westvoorne.
This installation is part of the POWER project (‘POsitive Wake Effects of turbines with tilted Rotors’), which aims to validate how tilted rotors can deflect wakes and capture higher-energy wind from upper air layers — enabling higher wind farm efficiency.
The POWER project is a collaboration between TouchWind, MOL, TNO, MARIN, Nidec and We4Ce, supported by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO).
