Certification of Damping Pool® design marks another important step towards delivery of commercial-scale floating offshore wind in Scotland
Buchan Offshore Wind has achieved Basic Design Certification from DNV for its BW Ideol designed concrete Damping Pool® floating support structure, marking a major technical milestone in the development of the near 1GW floating offshore wind project.
The certification was formally awarded by Sille Grjotheim, Director for Floating Offshore Wind, DNV at the Floating Offshore Wind Conference in Aberdeen on 7 October 2026. Presented to Clare Lavelle, Project Director the award recognised the significant progress made in developing and validating Buchan’s foundation design as the project advances towards commercial-scale delivery.
DNV has provided important independent validation of the design Buchan has selected as its preferred floating foundation, and the certification gives further confidence in the project’s technology and its pathway towards commercial-scale delivery.
Commenting on the award Clare Lavelle, Project Director, Buchan Offshore Wind, said:
“Achieving DNV Basic Design Certification is a significant milestone for the Buchan project, reflecting the expertise, commitment and hard work of the team and is an important step towards the industrialisation of floating offshore wind in Scotland.
“The opportunity for floating wind is no longer about proving the technology. It is about moving to commercial-scale deployment, establishing serial production and building the supply chains and infrastructure needed to create a competitive new industry. Buchan has an important pathfinder role to play in making that transition and helping establish Scotland’s capability to manufacture concrete floating foundations at scale.
“We have an ambitious but deliverable timetable giving government, investors and the supply chain a clear line of sight to construction by the end of the decade and delivery by the middle of the next.
“With the potential to support around 2,900 Scottish jobs during construction and deliver more than £2 billion in lifetime economic value, Buchan can help translate the UK’s floating wind ambition into long-term industrial and economic opportunity. This certification provides further confidence in our pathway to delivery and takes us another step closer to realising that opportunity.”
Sille Grjotheim, Director Floating Offshore Wind at DNV, said:
“It was a pleasure to formally hand over the Basic Design Certificate to the Buchan team in Aberdeen. Floating wind has already demonstrated that the technology works; the next challenge is to show that projects can be built robustly, financed with confidence and replicated at scale. This certification is an important building block in that transition from technology readiness to investment readiness.”
Paul De La Guérivière, Chief Executive Officer of BW Ideol said:
“DNV’s certification of the Buchan-specific Damping Pool® design is a strong signal of the maturity of our technology. We are proud to support Buchan Offshore Wind as it moves towards delivery, and we are working to establish in Scotland the serial production capability that commercial-scale floating wind requires.”
The Damping Pool® has already been deployed and successfully operated in several floating wind projects internationally, and its standard 15MW+ platform received Basic Design Certification from DNV in May 2025.
This technical maturity and commercial readiness are key contributors – alongside the ability to fabricate with a local supply chain – to the Damping Pool® retaining its #1 ranked spot in the Technology Leadership Board’s independent report into Floating Wind Technologies for the North Sea environment in 2025 and 2026.
Buchan’s certified Damping Pool® design builds on that proven technology, developed specifically for the project’s harsh North Sea site, providing an important step in the engineering and certification process as Buchan progresses towards delivery.
Buchan Offshore Wind is being developed around 75km north-east of Fraserburgh with a generating capacity of close to 1GW, providing enough secure and stable home-grown energy to power more than one million homes, and contributing significantly to the UK’s long term energy security.
Project partner BW Ideol has an exclusivity agreement in place with the Ardersier Energy Transition Facility for the manufacture of concrete floating foundations and is working actively on establishing a new serial production facility at the former oil and gas fabrication yard on the Moray Firth.
