world’s first floating wind farm starts powering scotland

‘hywind scotland’, the first floating wind farm in the world, has started to deliver electricity to the scottish power grid. it is estimated that the five turbines, which produce 30MW (mega watts), will supply 20,000 households with power. located 25 km (15.5 miles) offshore from peterhead in aberdeenshire, scotland, each turbine rises 175 meters from sea surface to blade tip, and extend another 78m below the surface, where they are then chained to the seabed to stay in position.

the floating turbines can operate in much deeper sea than previous developments
all images courtesy of statoil / øyvind gravås

‘hywind can be used for water depths up to 800 meters, thus opening up areas that so far have been inaccessible for offshore wind. the learnings from hywind scotland will pave the way for new global market opportunities for floating offshore wind energy. through their government’s support to develop the hywind scotland project, the UK and scotland are now at the forefront of the development of this exciting new technology. statoil looks forward to exploring the next steps for floating offshore wind,‘ says irene rummelhoff, executive vice president of the new energy solutions business area in statoil.

‘hywind scotland is showing that floating wind technology can be commercially viable wherever sea depths are too great for conventional fixed offshore wind power. this opens up a number of new geographies, and we are already looking at future opportunities with our partners, building on our existing international portfolio in onshore and offshore wind energy, and solar power,‘ explains mohamed al ramahi, CEO of masdar.

each turbine was towed by boat from norway

aiming to be a cost competitive solution with other renewable energy sources, ‘hywind scotland’ is set in water depths of up to 129m. operated together with masdar, statoil claims that up to 80% of potential offshore wind sites are in water more than 60m deep, with their floating turbines having the potential to work at up to 800m. the onshore operations and maintenance base for the floating wind farm is located in peterhead, while the oprations center is based in great yarmouth. furthermore, they will install batwind, a 1MWh lithium battery storage solution for offshore wind energy.