VIDEO: MOL invests in next-gen offshore wind start-up TouchWind

he TouchWind floating wind turbine features a single, one-piece, inclined rotor. [Image: TouchWind]

As we’ve seen from recent disappointing offshore wind sales in the U.S. Gulf and then in the U.K., energy companies are becoming wary of the investment involved in getting into floating offshore in particular. What if there were a better way?Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL) is investing in Eindhoven, Netherlands, headquartered start-up TouchWind BV. The company is developing a next-generation floating offshore wind turbine with the potential to be a game changer. The video shows the basic ideas of the concept.

Essentially, the TouchWind turbine has a single one-piece rotor that is inclined in order to reduce the wind interference between wind turbines that tends to occur in large-scale wind farms. In addition, its features are designed to enable operation in strong winds and to reduce the weight of the wind turbine and floating structure parts, All of this is expected to improve the capacity utilization rate of wind turbines, reduce manufacturing, operation, and maintenance costs, and reduce total power generation costs.

Since 2019, with the help of subsidies from the Dutch government TouchWind has demonstrated the principle of the technology, created a demonstration test machine with a 6 meter diameter rotor, and conducted demonstration tests on lakes in the Netherlands.

The design has also been model basin tested at the MARIN research center in the Netherlands where the floater design’s behavior was successfully tested while being exposed to a simulated storm occurring once in 100 years in harsh North Sea conditions. The floater faced winds of 50 meters/second and a significant wave height of 13 m. As well as wind and wave loads, mooring systems were examined.

While TouchWind’s test rotor has test diameter of 6 meters, the company envisions building full scale rotors of over 200 meters diameter, almost twice as long as the world’s current longest wind turbine blade. So there’s a lot of scaling up to be done — and the investment from MOL should help.

By investing in TouchWind, says MOL, it “will advance technological development toward the practical application of TouchWind’s wind turbines, and in the future will expand the supply chain for next-generation floating offshore wind turbines in Europe and Asia, including Japan.”

Founder and CEO of TouchWind, Rikus van de Klippe, welcomed MOL as a shareholder in the company.
“We have been working together for a year now on the further development of our floating wind turbine,” he said. “With MOL as a shareholder and their investments we can speed up our testing program, prove our technology and reduce time to market.”