Wind

New Italian floating wind power giant comes into orbit with gigascale Galileo-led plan

Joint venture with Hope Group moves forward with environmental impact scope-out of 1.1GW Barium Bay, the pair's follow-on to the in-development Lupiae Maris array

View of the Adriatic Sea from Italy
View of the Adriatic Sea from ItalyFoto: VV Nincic/Flockr

European renewable energy developer Galileo is partnering with Italy’s Hope Group to construct a giant 1.1GW floating wind plant in the Adriatic Sea, the latest gigascale project to break cover in the sector’s fast-emerging deepwater Mediterranean play.

Barium Bay, to be built around 74 x 15MW turbines on hulls moored some 40km off Barletta, will generate enough energy to supply one million households. The project follows on from the 525MW Lupiae Maris being jointly developed by the pair off the Brindisi coast.

“Barium Bay is a landmark project thanks to both its scale and potential contribution to Italy’s energy transition using exclusively local energy sources,” said Galileo CEO Ingmar Wilhelm.

“The Adriatic Sea offers a winning combination of key factors that make floating offshore wind projects highly attractive for Italy: good wind speeds [of an average of 7 metres per second], vast [offshore] areas, and suitable connection solutions to the national grid.

Michele Scoppio, CEO of Hope Group, stated: “This [new project] confirms the validity of our collaboration and the synergies arising from it, thanks to which we developed competencies making us a reference in the growing Italian offshore wind market.

“Barium Bay is an incredible opportunity also for the local community, which can become a hub of new capabilities for the energy transition.”

The developers are currently completing environmental and technical studies with the aim of submitting the project’s environmental impact assessment this summer, with a 24-month wind measurement campaign by Spain’s Eolos Floating Lidar Solutions to start in tandem.

Italy has one one operational offshore wind farm, Renexia’s 30MW Beleolico, brought online last year, but a host of developers have been building a pipeline of deepwater projects, with the country dubbed one of a ‘chasing pack’ of second generation floating wind markets with technical potential of near 4TW.
Along with the Galileo-Hope Group joint venture, other developers with oars in the deepwater off Italy include AvenHexicon, which was just secured 7GW of grid connection points from Italian transmission system operator Terna; a tie-up between Falck and BlueFloat, and start-up 7Seas Med.
The southern European country could also soon be home to the world’s largest floating wind-powered hydrogen hub, following the signing of a deal between developer Aquaterra Energy and Seawind Ocean Technology to build a 3.2GW project dubbed HyMed, off the southern European country.
Consultancy DNV calculates floating projects currently make up over 15% of the total offshore wind deployment in the pipeline for switch-on by mid-century, equal to some 264GW of the 1,750GW slated to be installed.
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Published 24 February 2023, 12:07Updated 24 February 2023, 12:35
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