The first floating wind farm of the Mediterranean will be created in the Strait of Sicily, off Marsala, Trapani.
The plant, called 7Seas Med, will include 25 floating blades worth 10 megawatts each and will not be visible from the Sicilian coast, at a distance of over 35 km from Marsala and as many from the Egadi Islands, in the direction of Tunisia.
The seabed in the area is about 300 meters deep – perfect for the floating turbines. It would not be possible to install normal stable offshore turbines which cannot exceed 50-60 meters in depth, according to financial daily Il Sole 24 Ore.
The project, which is worth an investment of 741 million euros, was developed by Danish company Copenhagen Offshore Partners with the support of the fund Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, specialized in large projects of renewable energy around the world, and was presented before the outbreak of the COVID pandemic at the ministries of the environment and infrastructure.
The project is now being processed by Italian bureaucracy but if everything will go according to plan, construction work should begin in 2023, said project manager Luigi Severini.
Severini created the project for the offshore wind farm of Taranto.