Hywind Scotland is the world's first commercial wind farm using

floating wind turbine A floating wind turbine is an offshore wind turbine mounted on a floating structure that allows the turbine to generate electricity in water depths where fixed-foundation turbines are not feasible. Floating wind farms have the potential to signi ...

s, situated off

Peterhead Peterhead (; gd, Ceann Phàdraig, sco, Peterheid ) is a town in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. It is Aberdeenshire's biggest settlement (the city of Aberdeen itself not being a part of the district), with a population of 18,537 at the 2011 Census. ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

. The farm has five 6 MW Siemens direct-drive turbines on ''Hywind'' floating monopiles, with a total capacity of 30 MW. It is operated by Hywind (Scotland) Limited, a joint venture of

Equinor Equinor ASA (formerly Statoil and StatoilHydro) is a Norwegian state-owned multinational energy company headquartered in Stavanger. It is primarily a petroleum company, operating in 36 countries with additional investments in renewable energy. I ...

(75%) and

Masdar Masdar,(Arabic:مصدر‎), also known as the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, is a UAE-government owned renewable energy company based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Masdar is a subsidiary of Mubadala Development Company and was founded by ...

(25%). Equinor (then: Statoil) launched the world's first operational deep-water floating large-capacity wind turbine, the US$71 million 2.3 MW Hywind ($31/W), in 2009. The tall tower with a 2.3 MW Siemens turbine was towed from the

Åmøy Åmøy is an island in Stavanger Municipality in Rogaland county, Norway. The island lies just north of the city of Stavanger in a group of islands. The islands of Sokn and Bru both lie to the west of Åmøy and the islands of Mosterøy a ...

fjord and offshore into the

North Sea The North Sea lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the Atlantic Ocean through the English Channel in the south and the Norwegian S ...

in deep water, off of

Stavanger, Norway Stavanger (, , US usually , ) is a city and municipality in Norway. It is the fourth largest city and third largest metropolitan area in Norway (through conurbation with neighboring Sandnes) and the administrative center of Rogaland county. Th ...

on 9 June 2009 for a two-year test run, but remains working at the site while surviving wind speed and 19 m waves. In 2015, the company received permission to install the wind farm in Scotland, in an attempt at reducing the cost relative to the original Hywind, in accordance with the Scottish Government's commitment for cost reduction. Manufacturing for the project, with a budgeted cost of NOK2 billion (£152m), started in 2016 in Spain, Norway and Scotland. The turbines were assembled at

Stord Stord is a municipality in Vestland county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Sunnhordland. Stord is sometimes called "Norway in miniature" since it has such a variety of landscapes: coastline, fjords, forests, agricultural l ...

in Norway in summer 2017 using the

Saipem 7000 The ''Saipem 7000'' is the world's third largest semi-submersible crane vessel, after the and the . It is owned by the oil and gas industry contractor Saipem S.p.A. Construction The vessel was designed by Gusto Engineering during 1984. The ve ...

floating crane, and the finished turbines were moved to near Peterhead. Three suction anchors hold each turbine. Hywind Scotland was commissioned in October 2017. While cost was reduced compared to the very expensive Hywind One at $31m/MW, it still came with a final capital cost of £264m, or £8.8m/MW, approximately three times the capital cost of fixed offshore windfarms. Measured by unit cost, its

levelized cost of energy The levelized cost of electricity (LCOE), or levelized cost of energy, is a measure of the average net present cost of electricity generation for a generator over its lifetime. It is used for investment planning and to compare different methods ...

(LCoE) is then £180/MWh ($248/MWh), about three times the typical LCoE of a fixed offshore wind farm at £55/MWh ($75.7/MWh). The high cost is partly compensated by £165.27/MWh from Renewable Obligation Certificates. In its first years of operation the facility has averaged a

capacity factor The net capacity factor is the unitless ratio of actual electrical energy output over a given period of time to the theoretical maximum electrical energy output over that period. The theoretical maximum energy output of a given installation is de ...

in excess of 50%. By shutting down at the worst conditions, it survived

Hurricane Ophelia The name Ophelia has been used for eleven tropical cyclones worldwide for four in the Atlantic and Western Pacific, and three in the Southwest Pacific. In the Atlantic Ocean: * Hurricane Ophelia (2005) – a slow-moving Category 1 hurricane that b ...

, and then

Storm Caroline A storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment or the atmosphere of an Astronomy, astronomical body. It may be marked by significant disruptions to normal conditions such as strong wind, tornadoes, hail, thunder and lightning (a thun ...

with wind gusts at and waves of 8.2 metres. The subsequent 94 MW Hywind Tampen (with concrete floating foundations) was under construction at the Snorre and

Gullfaks oil field Gullfaks is an oil and gas field in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea operated by Equinor. It was discovered in 1978, in block 34/10, at a water depth of 130-230 meters.Petterson, O., Storli, A., Ljosland, E., Nygaard, O., Massie, I., and Carl ...

s in Norway in 2022.

References

{{Electricity generation in Scotland 2017 establishments in Scotland 2017 in technology Equinor Wind farms in Scotland Offshore wind farms in the North Sea Floating wind turbines Energy infrastructure completed in 2017

See also

References