Esteyco, representing the WHEEL Consortium, attended the WindEurope Annual Event 2025 in Copenhagen, held from April 8 to 10.

Participating in this event was essential to reinforcing WHEEL’s contribution toward Europe’s 2030 decarbonisation goals. At the same time, the company actively represented Spanish offshore wind capabilities within a European forum. This participation helps strengthen international collaboration, supports knowledge exchange, and contributes to driving innovation across the offshore wind industry.

These activities have significantly contributed to the visibility, credibility, and strategic positioning of the WHEEL project, ensuring that its innovations are shared with relevant audiences and integrated into broader sectoral conversations.

Participation in the 2025 CINEA Cluster Event in Brussels provided an important opportunity for the WHEEL project to engage directly with other Horizon Europe initiatives, policy representatives, industry stakeholders, and research organisations working on offshore renewable energy.

Being part of this annual clustering activity strengthened the project’s visibility at both European and international level, while fostering exchanges on best practices, innovation challenges, and technological pathways relevant to floating wind development.

Through participation in the 2025 edition of the event, held in Brussels, the WHEEL Consortium reaffirmed its commitment to collaborative learning, transparency, and engagement across the sector, reinforcing the project’s contribution to Europe’s clean energy transition.

Attending WindEnergy Hamburg 2024 allowed Esteyco, on behalf of the WHEEL Consortium, to immerse itself in the global offshore wind landscape beyond the European framework. The event’s broad international scope and focus on emerging technologies, such as blade recycling, hydrogen integration, and smart monitoring systems, provided valuable insights into future challenges and opportunities. For WHEEL, this was not only a chance to learn from global leaders but also to identify innovative approaches that could inspire new directions within the project and strengthen its potential for international impact.

Attending FOWT 2024 in Marseille was a strategic opportunity for WHEEL to stay engaged with the latest developments in floating offshore wind. The event offered direct access to emerging technologies, expert perspectives, and international approaches to environmental monitoring and ecological regeneration. Given the growing relevance and visibility of offshore wind, this participation allowed WHEEL to assess the current market landscape and better define its next steps in innovation and collaboration.

Esteyco, representing the WHEEL Consortium, attended the 2024 International Partnering Forum (IPF), held in April in New Orleans, USA. Organized by the Oceantic Network. Esteyco’s presence supported the international visibility of the WHEEL project and allowed the team to connect with key players in the U.S. offshore wind supply chain.

Expanding outreach beyond Europe, WHEEL’s presence at the IPF in New Orleans marked its first entry into the US offshore wind market, a key international target region for knowledge exchange and future collaborations. Its inclusion of the American sector reflects WHEEL’s strategic aim to engage with new geographical markets and support transatlantic dialogue in the renewable offshore energy sector. Additionally, this also supports the broader goals of Horizon Europe by encouraging global dialogue, facilitating the transfer of innovation, and aligning with market-oriented dissemination strategies.

Esteyco, on behalf of the WHEEL Consortium, attended the Floating Offshore Wind Technical Symposium (FOWTEC 2024), held on April 22nd in Getxo, Bilbao. A team of Esteyco engineers participated in the event to stay up to date with the latest technical developments in the floating offshore wind sector and to support the visibility of the WHEEL project. The symposium featured thematic sessions on control co-design strategies, numerical modeling, and wave tank testing methodologies, offering valuable insights into current research and innovation trends.

Attendees also had the opportunity to visit the BIMEP offshore test site, including the DemoSATH and HarshLab platforms. These installations represent cutting-edge infrastructure for testing floating wind prototypes and materials under real marine conditions. The visit allowed participants to observe operational systems and discuss monitoring strategies and mooring configurations.

Esteyco’s participation contributed to the dissemination of the WHEEL project’s early-stage results and strengthened connections with other European stakeholders in the offshore wind sector. The event served as a valuable platform for knowledge exchange and visibility within the floating wind community.

Esteyco’s team attended WindEurope 2024 in Bilbao, to stay up to date with the latest developments in both onshore and offshore wind technologies, and to engage with other industry actors, researchers, and stakeholders. The event offered a valuable opportunity to explore new trends, strengthen professional networks, and reinforce Esteyco’s role in the European wind energy ecosystem.

Participation in WindEurope Bilbao also supported the WHEEL project’s commitment to continuous learning and international collaboration. By attending technical sessions and engaging in networking activities, Esteyco advanced its efforts to bring innovation beyond the company and into the global offshore wind community.

The WHEEL Consortium composed of 2-BENERGY, BOSKALIS, ROVER MARITIME, REPNAVAL, BRIDON-BEKAERT, VICINAY, PLOCAN, FIHAC, CEMEX, EnBW and ESTEYCO as the Coordinator and Technologist, has gathered in Santander to witness first-hand the ambitious tank testing campaign of the WHEEL technology carried out in the facilities of FIHAC.

Video below shows the successful results on the seakeeping behaviour of the WHEEL prototype at different operational conditions including rated wind speed and severe sea states to reproduce different options in real environments.

Further tests will be carried out soon -now in collaboration with the UPM (Polytechnic University of Madrid)- in order to also assess the external abrasion resistance of the suspension tendons around the connecting elements.

With this, we are one step closer to our next milestone, the construction of the WHEEL prototype in Q4 2025!

The WHEEL project, which includes the full-scale demonstration of a revolutionary floating wind technology excellently suited for deep water locations, effective industrialization strategies, breakthrough cost reduction and minimized carbon footprint, has been funded by the European Commission through the Horizon Europe program.

The 2nd General Assembly of the WHEEL project took place last 26th and 27th February. All partners gathered in Santander to review the good results achieved in the latest months and to define steps in the next period of the project.

This GA meeting coincided with the execution of the tank testing in IHC premises. Therefore, all partners had the opportunity to witness first-hand the successful results on the seakeeping behaviour of the WHEEL prototype at different operational conditions including rated wind speed and severe sea states to reproduce different options in real environments.

The WHEEL project, funded by the European Commission through the Horizon Europe program, aims to bring to a precommercial Technology Readiness Level (TRL) a revolutionary floating wind technology excellently suited for deep water locations, effective industrialization strategies, breakthrough cost reduction and minimized carbon footprint.

Engaging directly with stakeholders in these settings fosters visibility and impact, enhances WHEEL’s profile at a European and international level, and supports the transfer of innovation to market and policy environments, core goals of effective communication and dissemination under Horizon Europe.

The WHEEL Consortium gathered last week for the 1 st General Assembly meeting of the WHEEL project. All partners including @2BEnergy, @Rover, @IHC, @EnbW, @Bridon, @Repnaval, @Boskalis, @Vicinay, @Cemex and @Plocan joined to this first meeting that took place in Madrid to follow up on the technical and coordination tasks developed in the different work packages during the first 6 months of the project.

The overall objective of the WHEEL project, funded by the European Commission through the Horizon Europe (GA 101084409), is to fully demonstrate and bring to a precommercial Technology Readiness Level (TRL) a revolutionary floating wind technology excellently suited for deep water locations, effective industrialization strategies, breakthrough cost reduction and minimized carbon footprint.

This shall enable a radical step forward for LCoE reduction, whilst also addressing scalability, harbour infrastructure suitability and availability, and the sustainability & circularity of floating offshore wind.

In this first GA meeting, Esteyco, as coordinator of the project and responsible for the design of the WHEEL prototype, explained the technical progress achieved during this first stage of the project. It also showed the partners some additional tank testing campaign carried out to assess the transport (tow-out), operation, UT alone (tow-in) and UT deballasted actions of the prototype with excellent results.

Actions in the following months were also defined and agreed by the Consortium who will continue working to contribute to reaching the European commitment of net zero emissions by 2050.

The WHEEL project’s KoM took place on 19 and 20 January. All partners including 2-BENERGY, BOSKALIS, ROVER MARITIME, REPNAVAL, BRIDON-BEKAERT, VICINAY, PLOCAN, FIHAC, CEMEX and EnBW gathered in Brussels to get the WHEEL project started.

The WHEEL Project, selected by the European Commission under its Horizon Europe program, aims to build a full-scale prototype of ESTEYCO’s breakthrough technology for floating wind. This will allow us to prove its competitiveness and the many advantages that this solution
provides to achieve the European goal of leading the development of wind energy worldwide.

The WHEEL Technology (Wind Hybrid Evolution for Low-carbon solutions) provides an efficient solution to today’s big challenges of the wind energy market which are mainly how to create competitive floater industrialization strategies avoiding supply chain bottlenecks.

It consists of a spar floating platform, or better said, an evolved spar floating platform providing multiple advantages such as floater size reduction, low draft at harbour as well as reduction of material usage and carbon footprint.

In the meeting, Esteyco, as Coordinator of the project introduced the project to the European Commission’s Project Officer and each partner presented their tasks and responsibilities within the project.

All partners are committed to working closely together on what may be considered as one step further in the decarbonization of energy production and one step closer to the net zero emissions.