Ocergy confirms commercial readiness for two offshore technologies following the successful deployment of its floating wind platform and the continued operation of its environmental monitoring buoy
Ocergy has announced that its OCG-Wind floating wind platform and OCG-Data environmental monitoring buoy have both reached key milestones, paving the way for commercial deployment of the company’s two offshore technology solutions.
The OCG-Wind 3MW floating wind platform has completed load-out and turbine assembly and was towed to a location near the Culzean gas platform in the UK North Sea in August. The installation will supply 20% of the platform’s electricity demand at the offshore facility.
Ocergy designed OCG-Wind to deliver floating wind on an industrial scale. The platform is composed of modular steel components that can be efficiently fabricated in steel workshops and assembled entirely with bolted connections at a port near the wind farm site. In a commercial setting, this allows platforms to be produced and installed at a rate of one per week, the pace needed to deliver utility-scale floating wind farms on time and on budget.
“As Ocergy’s partner and a shareholder since its Series A, and as Archer Wind is the main contractor for Culzean, we have successfully implemented Ocergy’s vision of an industrialized, fully bolted floating wind platform. The floater components were fabricated in Greece, transported by sea and assembled at Wergeland in Norway. Bolted connections allow fabrication to be separated from assembly: components can be built wherever capacity exists and assembled quickly close to the site. That is exactly what the industry needs to reach a rate of one platform per week,” said Charlotte Berge, Executive Vice President Renewables, Archer.
After a three-year deployment as part of the BLUE ORACLE project, the OCG-Data buoy has been redeployed for a further three years in the French Mediterranean for MARE (Mesures et Analyses Radar pour l’Environnement), a radar monitoring project at the Golfe de Fos 1 floating wind site. The inspection before redeployment showed the platform and its flanges in excellent condition, and Ocergy took the opportunity to upgrade the buoy’s 100% renewable power management system and data interface. With this track record, OCG-Data is now ready for commercial contracts and becomes Ocergy’s second product line.
“With MARE, our objective is to develop an innovative environmental monitoring programme for the Méditerranée Grand Large floating offshore wind project including bird and bat monitoring and to achieve an unprecedented level of accuracy for a site located more than 25 kilometres offshore. This environmental data will help us refine the project’s design and development, while also supporting the implementation of measures tailored to the specific conditions of the offshore wind farm,” said Benoîte Chenut, Floating Offshore Wind Project Director, EDF power solutions
A second OCG-Data buoy is being built for the Mutsu-Ogawara offshore wind test site in Aomori Prefecture, Japan, as part of a research project led by Kyuden Mirai Energy and funded by NEDO, Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization. The project is progressing well, with installation planned for 2027.
“When we founded Ocergy, we set out to prove that floating offshore platforms could be designed for mass production: simple, bolted and fast to install. Culzean shows that it works. At a time when many floating offshore wind projects face delays, in September we completed, on time and on budget, the retrofit of our BLUE ORACLE buoy and its redeployment for MARE. With two proven products, we’re ready to scale,” said Dominique Roddier, CEO of Ocergy.
