Statoil has announced that it will build the world’s first floating wind farm called The Hywind pilot park offshore Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
The Norwegian operator in gas, oil and new energy, Statoil, will install a 30-MW wind turbine farm on floating structures at Buchan Deep, 25km offshore Peterhead, harnessing Scottish wind resources to provide renewable energy to the mainland.
The pilot park will cover around 4 square kilometres, at a water depth of 95-120m. The average wind speed in this area of the North Sea is around 10m per second. The wind farm will power about 20,000 households, Statoil says. Production start is expected in late 2017.
“Statoil is proud to develop the world’s first floating wind farm. Our objective with the Hywind pilot park is to demonstrate the feasibility of future commercial, utility-scale floating wind farms. This will further increase the global market potential for offshore wind energy, contributing to realising our ambition of profitable growth in renewable energy and other low-carbon solutions,” says Irene Rummelhoff, Statoil’s executive vice president for New Energy Solutions.
Hywind is a unique offshore wind technology developed and owned by Statoil. The wind turbines are supplied by Siemens. The concept has been verified through six years of successful operation of a prototype installed off the island of Karmøy in Norway.