Why Principle Power sees South Korea winning floating wind's race to industrial scale

Principle Power may have its roots in California and an adopted home in Portugal, but the floating wind technology pioneer is increasingly focussed on South Korea as the market where it is closest to achieving the all-important step up to industrial scale floating wind projects.

In a sector that is eager to prove its own bankability, Principle Power has stood out by pursuing initiatives to help pave the way for industrialisation and a maturing toward gigascale deployments.

This was the case last October when the company launched a fourth generation of its WindFloat semi-submersible designs aiming to facilitate industrialisation, lower costs and boost supply chain participation in regions with differing fabrication capacities and port characteristics.

The first of the new designs, called WindFloat T, encourages more automised forms of modular fabrication – including orbital welding, robotic manufacturing, and assembly of columns, trusses and heave plates – and uses established tubular fabrication methods.

The second design, WindFloat F, shifts from tubular to hexagonal geometry as part of a new flat-panel and pontoon-based solution. It is intended to open the doors to ultra-shallow or space-constrained ports as well as a wider range of supply chain players, including those with established panel-based fabrication lines.

“We've been doing tons of work, not only the customer base but also with the lender, investment and insurance community in order to demonstrate the bankability of both solutions, and we are seeing each of these technologies being selected for projects,” says Principle Power's chief commercial officer Aaron Smith.

“The reaction has been really positive, especially when we talk to fabricators coming from the shipbuilding industry about the introduction of the flat panel design - suddenly they see so much scope to leverage traditional supply chains and to provide an alternative to some of the tubular construction that's in such high demand for monopile and jacket-based projects."

Principle Power’s strategy also includes an industrialisation initiative aimed at deploying 300 WindFloats by the end of 2030.

“From a technical perspective, we are working through collaborations with yards, supply chain partners, and providers of solutions in ports and logistics, so that we have a stack of methods and processes to enable these sort of projects," Smith enthuses.

But he admits pervading policy and regulatory delays in many key market have so far prevented many plans from turning into full-blown projects, with attention typically turning to the pace of tenders or uncertainty about grid connections.

“What we're talking about is not what is technically or commercially viable, but how we get the right conditions in place. Where are the markets where these initial projects can deploy?," he says.

Korea ahoy

"But we do see these strong candidate projects," Smith adds, "Especially in Korea.”

Principle Power is positioned to provide the floating platforms for two gigawatt-scale projects off the coast of South Korea's Ulsan City.

The first of these is the 1.3GW Korea Floating Wind (KFWind) project, where Ocean Winds and Aker Offshore Wind bought a majority interest in 2019.

The second is for Haewoori 2 and 3, a pair of 500MW floating wind arrays where a Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners fund awarded the main front-end engineering and design (FEED) contract to Norway’s Aker Solutions in February, with Principle Power in place to design the floating system and mooring.

With a third project in the conceptual engineering phase, the three Haewoori Offshore Wind arrays are expected to provide South Korea with 1.5GW of capacity.

“Right now we see [South Korea] as likely to be the first time place where industrial scale floating wind projects is deployed, " Smith says, referring to a "healthy chunk of capacity" that could be deployed on these two projects over the next seven or eight years.

Although both have yet to through a competitive process to secure offtake agreements, Smith is bullish about their prospects, reeling off a list of factors that includes a strong offshore wind resource — especially in deep water — a good coastal transmission network, and renewable energy targets that bind not just the government, but corporations too.

“We see a confluence of political support that comes from having renewable energy targets in place without too many possibilities to rival to offshore wind, as well as having a very capable and established shipbuilding industry that is politically quite important," Smith notes.

“Such things are creating really good conditions for the development of floating offshore wind, with commitments from the Korean government across the board.”

Smith hastens to namecheck other markets that are also strong candidates in the UK, the US, France, Portugal, Spain and potentially Norway, but admits that much of the last year has been characterised by delay rather than progress on the floating wind ramp up.

"In places like the UK, which we would have expected to consolidate a leadership position... they are not yet able to provide clarity on the the grid connection, timing and dates. And what that means is that we do not have projects pushing as as hard as they could because they are really focused on the regulatory aspects," Smith worries.

"It's not to say that other countries aren't moving or don't have the ability to contribute by 2030, but we do we see Korea as a very good place to industrialise floating wind."

Supplier dialogue

Principle Power's own dialogue with suppliers ranges from the kind of cost-containment that can be achieved by leveraging existing capacity, to estimates and consultations about the kind of specialised facilities that are envisaged as floating offshore wind goes to a higher scale and pursues a cost reduction trajectory.

"If you want to have the proper quality, schedule, capacity, we think you need to be using as much as possible of the existing capacity in the market, at least for the first floating wind projects..

"In the near term, and especially with the political uncertainty the way that it is, we think that you you have to be able to smartly use that existing capacity to deliver these projects."

In South Korea, Smith also noted that "some of the very capable shipyards there are putting forward their own plans for expansion or repurposing some facilities" as a response to the demand for offshore wind work.

One of the collaboration agreements reached by Principle Power is with South Korea's HSG Sungdong yard and the pair have produced a blueprint showing a detailed simulation of workflow for the WindFloat F. This provides an example of industrialised production on a well-equipped yard with infrastructure extending to things like warehoused module production facilties and gantry cranes for assembly and integration.

Another Principle Power simulation shows workflow of the WindFloat T at Global Energy Group's Nigg yard in Scotland, demonstrating a yard hosting the final module assembly phase using mainly temporary equipment, rather than permanent infrastructure, but achieving the same efficient processes for skids, lifting, assembly and hull integration as well as loadout operations.

"This allows a conception of what can be done with existing facilities and also helps people to understand that these highly capable ports really are a prerequisite for the efficient and cost effective delivery of floating offshore wind," Smith says.

Principle Power's technology so far powers 75MW on pre-commercial projects in Portugal and Scotland, with another 30MW under construction in France.