Windcatcher: A Floating Wall of Turbines Offshore

Windcatcher: The Floating Offshore Wind System That Flipped the Industry's Logic

The offshore wind industry spent decades chasing one answer: bigger. Taller towers. Longer blades. Machines so massive that only the world's largest crane vessels can install them. Wind Catching Systems looked at that trajectory and asked a different question entirely. What if smaller was the answer?

Founded in 2017 in Lysaker, Norway, Wind Catching Systems built the Windcatcher — a floating offshore wind multi-turbine system that replaces one giant turbine with a wall of many smaller ones, all mounted on a single floating structure. The largest unit carries 126 MW of installed capacity. In North Sea conditions, that generates five times the electricity of a standalone 15 MW turbine. Not by building something bigger. By building something smarter.

How the Floating Offshore Wind Multi-Turbine System Works

Each turbine in the Windcatcher is rated at 1 MW — small by any industry standard. That's deliberate. Compact machines capture 2.5 times more energy per square metre of wind flow than conventional three-blade designs. Moreover, the system scales simply: add more identical turbines, not larger ones. The supply chain stays the same whether the structure carries 20 units or 200. No new technology barriers. No custom components. Just more of the same proven parts.

Maintenance is where conventional offshore wind quietly falls apart. Servicing a blade 150 metres above sea level, on a floating platform, in winter North Sea conditions, requires specialist crane vessels costing hundreds of thousands of dollars per day — vessels that often can't operate at all in bad weather. The Windcatcher solves this with an integrated elevator platform that reaches any turbine on the structure for inspection or full replacement. Standard service vessels handle transport. No cranes required. Consequently, a faulty unit gets swapped on-site and sent onshore for repair — rather than halting the entire platform while waiting for specialist equipment that may never arrive in time.

The $107M Grant That Proved the Floating Offshore Wind Bet

In July 2024, DNV — the world's leading maritime classification body — granted the Windcatcher an Approval in Principle after a full third-party technical review. Ole Heggheim, CEO of Wind Catching Systems, called it a new era in offshore wind energy. That certification mattered because it removed the one credibility barrier every major developer had been waiting on.

The money followed fast. In early 2025, Enova — Norway's Ministry of Climate and Environment — awarded Wind Catching Systems a $107 million grant to build a 40-turbine, 40 MW demonstrator northwest of Bergen, near Øygarden, scheduled for completion in 2029. In January 2025, German energy giant EnBW announced a strategic partnership with the company. Arup, the global engineering consultancy, joined in March 2024 to build advanced simulation models for the system's structural loads and performance.

Floating wind electricity from the Windcatcher is projected to cost between €40 and €60 per megawatt-hour — the range at which offshore wind finally becomes cost-competitive with everything else on the grid.