Spanish utility Iberdrola is heading a consortium aiming to develop a large-scale floating offshore wind turbine in the North Sea, as the sector looks to drive up the size of technology and push down costs. In an announcement Monday, the firm said the turbine would be in excess of 10 megawatts (MW) and tested at the Marine Energy Test Centre in Norway. The average size of offshore turbines installed in 2019 was 7.8 MW, according to trade body WindEurope.
The international consortium, made up of firms from Spain, Germany, France, Norway and Denmark, aims to reduce the cost of floating offshore wind energy production. Iberdrola said it hoped to lower the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) for floating offshore wind to between 40 and 60 ($44 and $66) euros per megawatt hour (MWh). The project is connected to the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program, which is providing almost 80 billion euros of funding to projects between 2014 and 2020. Iberdrola said it hoped to sign an agreement amounting to around 25 million euros with the European Commission in the second half of this year.
A leader in offshore wind, Europe is already home to the world’s first floating offshore wind farm, Hywind Scotland. A 30 MW pilot scheme of five turbines in waters off the coast of Peterhead, it started to send electricity to Scotland’s grid in 2017.
Source: CNBC
Global site 
Finnish site