Five wind turbines are slowly being towed out into the North Sea, during the summer, in order to create world’s first floating offshore wind farm.
The first of the 11,500-tonne turbines has been already put in place at Buchan Deep, 15 miles off the north-east coast at Peterhead.
The wind farm is part of the Hywind Scotland project, that costed a total of USD$253 million. Under the project, the turbines were built in Norway and are dragged to Scotland, where they will start working off the coast.
According to the project investor, Statoil, the farm will harness Scottish wind resources to provide renewable energy to the mainland and will power around 20,000 households. Production start is expected in late 2017.
“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”, had said Irene Rummelhoff, Statoil’s executive vice president for New Energy Solutions.
