43 participants had already prequalified to offer proposals for developing floating wind farms totaling up to 4.5GW in the deep Pacific waters offshore of California. However, only seven players have actually submitted project bids.

This sweeping abstention bears witness both to the challenges involved with floating wind development as well as the industry’s resulting cautious stance.

Bidding started Tuesday, and winners are supposed to be announced later in the day. After the 19th bidding round at 5 p.m. PST, the five tendered areas had attracted bids with consolidated values of USD 387m, equating to USD 2,580 per hectare, 150,000 of which are up for auction.

By that time, only six participants were still in the game.

Thus far, merely 113MW of floating wind capacity are installed globally, whereas operational fixed-bottom offshore wind is up near 50GW worldwide.

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