Kumagai Gumi has become the second Japanese company to join the floating offshore wind demonstrator project DemoSATH project, developed by Saitec Offshore Technologies.

Kansai Electric Power Company Co. (KEPCO) is already involved. Kumagai Gumi, a general contractor in the construction sector, will investigate optimizing future decommissioning techniques and assess procedures for future mass production.

It will also support extended operation of the DemoSATH prototype at the BiMEP open-sea test site close to Armintza on the Basque coast in northern Spain through 2027.

The prototype, featuring a 2-MW wind turbine mounted on a concrete twin-hull floating structure, is moored 3.2 km offshore in the Cantabrian Sea, in 85 m of water.

It was built and assembled at the Port of Bilbao before being towed to the location at BiMEP.

This latest phase of the project takes place three years after operations started.

Over this period, the partners have validated the installation, operation and power generation of the SATH floating system under real offshore conditions, also retrieving data on its structural, dynamic and operational behavior via the DemoSATH Lab project.

To date, the facility as withstood waves of up to 13 m and winds of up to 100 km/hr.

Instrumentation and monitoring systems onboard allow operational data to be collected under real conditions, enabling comparison of its behavior with models developed during the design phase.

The longer-term goal is to transfer the experience gained to future large-scale commercial projects in various international markets.

Planned activities include optimised monitoring of critical system components, data analysis and predictive modeling, and assessing the response of floating wind systems under wide-ranging offshore conditions.