The first of five turbines for the Hywind Scotland commercial-scale floating offshore wind farm has now sailed away from Stord in Norway to its final destination – the Buchan Deep, 15 miles east of Peterhead.
All five turbines were successfully assembled earlier this summer. Now they are being individually towed to Scottish waters.
Each turbine journey takes four days of sailing across the North Sea. On arrival, work will start immediately to install anchor lines and hook-up operations. Turbine installation is scheduled to be finished by the end of August.
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 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.
Norway’s Statoil corporation is the operator of the Hywind fleet. Masdar – the Abu Dhabi renewable energy company – has a 25% equity stake in the project.
21 July 2017
Pixie Energy is an incubator and a facilitator of strategic research and project work, focusing on energy regulation, policy and markets at the local and national level. Find out more about Pixie Energy