The Spanish renwable energies giant Acciona and naval shipbuilder Navantia have made it known that they are going to co-operate in the specific field of offshore wind farms. The two companies state that they are determined to " develop projects, and insdustrial and technological activities in collaboration with different institutions with a view to contributing to the creation of an offshore wind farm industry". Their co-operation in the domaine of offshore wind power also intends to cover fields as diverse as "the construciton of mono-pile or jacket foundations, building sub-stations and electricity stations, meteorological stations, maintenance ships and platforms for the installation of dismantlement of unts". Acciona and Navantia also announced that they are going to undertake a number of enquiries and evaluations in order to assess the capacity of Spanish ports and the existing Navantia installations for use in the offshore wind farm industry".
Although the onshore wind turbine industry is quite highly developed in Spain and the number of turbine builders is sizeable((Acciona, Gamesa, Iberdrola), the same is not true of fixed offshore units. This is due adiz o the fact that Spanish companies have focussed their research and work mainly on floating turbines because of the narrow continentail shelpf off their coast, that plunges to great depths relatively close to shore. "Spain is number 2 in Europe and number 4 worldwide in the onshore wind turbine industry and our two companies agreed that it was essential to seize the growth opportunity offered by the anticipated spectacular growth of the offshore industry in coming decades. We need to ensure that we are not overtaken and displaced by groups coming from outside the country, and that are already interested in the industry for electricty production"; explained Carmen Becceril, Manaiging Diector of Acciona. Navantia is the fifth largest naval shipbuilder in Europe, and one of the ten largest worldwide. They affirm that their installations in the Bay of Cadiz and elsewhere (unspecified) have the infrastructure for storage, assembly, installation, exploitation and maintainance of offshore wind farm equipment. Navantia claims to be able as of now to undertake R&D for the conception of floating structures and the ships for the installation and support of offshore wind farms in deep water some in collaboration with Acciona. That company likes to put forward its 3Mw offshore AW3000 turbine, generally considered as outdated given the capacities now beng advanced by Siemens, Vestas, REpower, let alone Areva or Alstom. They are late to market when operators are seeking greatly to reduce the costs of operating offshore wind turbines by increasing the output per unit. On the other hand, Acciona does have considerable expertise in marine and port construction, as well as onshore wind farm operation, with some 220 on-shore farms having a total capacity of 6.38 GW. Acciona sees itself undertaking a technology transfer from onshore to offshore as well as the optimisation offshore based on its marine and onshore wind farm experience, as the basis for its success in the market. Its weakness is in the turbines, but there have been discussions with the Japanaese firm Mitsubishi Electric in June with a view to setting up a joint venture, or even an offshore consortium to serve the markets of Northern Europe. It is still not known if Navantia has agreed to this or excluded such an alliance. In any event since the framework agreement of €2Bn signed in 2009 between Acciona et Mitsubishi as a result of which Mitsubishi took a stake in Acciona's giant solar plant in Portugal, the two companies have been in regular contact as soon as renewables were being discussed. Thus In February 2011, Mitsubishi acquired 15 % of Acciona's thermal actvities. According to the Danish consultancy BTM Consult ApS, in 2020 installed offshore wind farms will amount globally to 75,000Mw of which 52,000Mw will be in Europe, 19.600 MW in China and only 2.000 MW in Canada and the USA combined. ccording to EWEA by 2030, 150.000 MW will be installed in Europe alone, representing ana investment of some €16.5Bn p.a. The market therefore has plenty to whet the appetites of several large European industrial groups.
Sources : Sites linked and mentionned. Photos : turbine AW3000 © Acciona
