The Windflip is designed to transport and install floating wind turbines. (Image: Windflip)

Windflip vessel designed to deliver floating wind turbines to their deepwater moorings easily and efficiently.

The Hywind floating turbine–as well as a handful of other potentially-viable commercial floating wind turbine designs–has received loads of attention from renewable energy enthusiasts for good reason: floating turbines can be placed further offshore, in deeper water. Deep-water wind turbines tap stronger, more consistent wind resources and reduce the likelihood of NIMBY opposition.

But if floating wind turbines are to become cost competitive, certain manufacturing and delivery processes will need to be perfected to facilitate and hasten their adoption.

One such breakthrough design in floating wind turbine delivery and installation was developed by a team of graduate students at the institute of Marine Technology at the Norwegian School of Science and Technology (NTNU).

The Windflip is a vessel designed to take technologies like Hywind’s floating turbine out to sea from their construction or assembly point out to the location where they will be moored. To launch the wind turbines the entire vessel flips 90 degrees and releases the wind turbines in upright position. The Windflip vessel can take one or two floating turbines at a time.

Here’s a short animation of how the Windflip does its highly specialized work. Very cool stuff:

The Energy Collective