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Hywind Scotland is the world’s first floating offshore wind farm with a 30 MW capacity. It generates enough power for 20,000 Scottish homes.
The project uses innovative technology based on as much data as it can learn from the world’s first floating wind turbine in Norway, which was built by Equinor, the same developer of Hywind Scotland.
Future projects aim to extract learnings from this project. Equinor seeks to bring down the cost of floating wind farms and bring the price. They will help make floating wind farms globally competitive. While ensuring that the cost of floating wind farms decreases, the company continues to perform nicely with its current operations at Hywind Scotland. It looks to expand future projects as well.
Where is Hywind Scotland Wind Farm?
Hywind Scotland is near the UK peninsula’s tip, east of Scotland’s coast at the North Sea. The average wave in the area is as high as 1.8 meters. North Sea water depths range from 90 meters to even as deep as 120 meters.
Hywind’s five turbines are just 29 kilometers off the coast of Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
Who owns Hywind Wind Farm?
The project is a joint venture between energy giant Equinor (formerly Statoil) and Masdar in a 75: 25 equity mix.
Equinor was the first to overcome the structural strains of a floating offshore wind farm by building the world’s first floating wind farm in 2009 off the coast of Stavanger, Norway. The Hywind turbine operated in 40 meters-per-second winds on 220-meter deep waters.
How large is the Hywind offshore wind farm project?
The Hywind Scotland project is only 4 square kilometers in total area.
When is the first power of Hywind Wind Farm?
The project was officially commissioned in October 2017.
How deep can floating offshore wind turbines work?
So far, as the first floating wind farm using the most comprehensive technologies, Hywind Scotland is operating at depths of 90 to 120 meters. In addition, the previous 2009 demonstration project of Equinor in Norway worked at a depth of 220 meters.
The upcoming project of Equinor, Hywind Tampen, will operate at 260 to 300-meter depths. With those parameters, it would be a matter of bringing down the cost of commercializing the deeper floating wind farms.
The farm used a floating foundation and a spar buoy substructure. The 78-meter substructure is held down by three mooring lines weighing 1,200 tonnes, which serve as a suction anchor into the seabed for stability.
How much power does Hywind Scotland?
The size of the offshore wind farm is only 30 MW. Still, the impressive result of the project’s outcome is its highest average capacity factor across all offshore wind farms in the UK. In 2021, this performance was officially released by Equinor on their website, referring to the third consecutive year of operations, citing rolling data until March 2020.
Fortunately for the industry, Equinor will be sharing its best practices. According to plant manager Sonja Chirico Indrebø, “We’re sharing parts of this data across the industry to help the advancement of the technology globally and more widely than just our operations.”
Looking at the current data, the wind farm achieved what no offshore farm has previously done, exceeding its production’s 50% capacity factor for four consecutive years. Equinor will operate Hywind Scotland until 2038 and will then decommission it.
Hywind Scotland Wind Turbines
Siemens and Equinor jointly developed the project’s five turbines. Each turbine has a 6 MW nameplate capacity, yielding a 30 MW capacity for the project.
Expansion Plans
The farm’s success will support future projects by bringing in more learnings and data. Equinor is also constantly striving to increase the scale of projects for floating wind farms. They have set a new record with Hywind. Although the cost remains high, there is much potential farther out in the sea where the offshore wind average speed is much higher and consistent.
Hywind Tampen is the next floating project of Equinor, which will operate and go live in 2022. Hywind Tampen is a 95-meter floating wind farm using 11 Siemens Gamesa 8.0-167 DD turbines in Norway, the home of state-owned Equinor.