Offshore Wind: SeaTwirl Secures Funding

Swedish floating wind turbine player SeaTwirl has joined the Ocean Energy Scale-Up Alliance (OESA) that has been granted funding from the Interreg North Sea Region.

SeaTwirl is a vertical floating wind turbine that was tested off the west coast of Sweden in 2011. It is also the name of the company that produces the turbine.

OESA, which is coordinated by the Dutch Marine Energy Center, has been granted funding from Interreg North Sea Region for a three-year project which aims to accelerate the deployment of large-scale ocean energy pilots in the North Sea.

13 partners are tied to OESA, where eight of the partners will provide services for the pilot projects of the remaining five.

The service providers are Dutch Marine Energy Center, European Marine Energy Centre, Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult (UK), Aalborg University (DK), Danish Wave Energy Centre, ÅKP (Blue Maritime Cluster, NO), Uppsala University (SE) and SSPA Sweden.

The pilot projects come from Tocardo Tidal Power (tidal power, NL), Seabased (wave energy, NO), NEMOS (wave energy, DE), Floating Power Plant (combined wave and wind energy, DK) and SeaTwirl.

The alliance will also engage policy-makers, offshore companies and investors to pave the way for future developments. For SeaTwirl, the membership means access to consultancy services as well as funding of GBP433 952 for developing the turbine.

“We are very happy to be part of this alliance and this project and of course also for the money from the grant. There is a lot of expertise and experience available around the North Sea region that we can now more easily tap into and gain support from on our way to building a cost-efficient wind turbine”, says Gabriel Strängberg, CEO of SeaTwirl.