The first of five turbines for the Hywind Scotland commercial-scale floating offshore wind farm has now sailed away (date 17/07/2017) from Stord in Norway to its final destination, Buchan Deep, 25 km east of Peterhead in Scotland. Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, announced that it had acquired a 25% stake in the Hywind Scotland project during Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week in January.
All five turbines were successfully assembled outside Stord, Norway this summer. Now they are being individually towed to Scottish waters. Each turbine journey takes 4 days of sailing across the North Sea. On arrival, work immediately starts to install anchor lines and to perform hook-up operations, taking 2-3 days per turbine. Turbine installation is scheduled to be finished by the end of August.
In parallel, the loadout of the cables will commence in Halden, Norway. An installation vessel will then go to Kristiansand, Norway, to pick up vertical anchors and buoyancy modules before heading to Peterhead for pull-in of the export cable. The cable will then be laid out in Buchan Deep with the second end connected to one of the floating wind turbines. After installing the export cable, the remaining four infield cables will be installed over two campaigns planned to be finalized by the end of September.
Hywind Scotland consists of wind turbines placed on top of ballasted steel cylinders. Each floating turbine unit is fastened to the seabed by three mooring lines. A demonstration project near Karmøy in Norway has proven the technology. Over six years of testing in the North Sea, the concept was verified with the performance exceeding expectations.
Statoil is the operator of the Hywind Scotland pilot park with a 75% stake.
Facts:
- The Hywind Scotland pilot park is the world’s first commercial-scale floating offshore wind farm
- It will power approximately 20,000 households when in production from late 2017
- The pilot park will cover around 4 square kilometres 25 km offshore Peterhead at water depths of 95-120 metres.
- The average wind speed in this area of the North Sea is around 10 metres per second
