Page 28: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (May/Jun 2019)

27 29

FEATURE Floating Wind

A Future for

Floating

Wind

With more demonstrators in the water, more substantial players are taking interest in ? oating offshore wind.

BY ELAINE MASLIN or some time, ? oating offshore wind THE FLOATER DESIGNS has been something of a niche, but A number of designs have been out in the water now full-scale demonstrators are in for more than one year. Earliest off the mark was the works, and bigger players – in- Equinor, with its Hywind spar concept. A scale

F cluding oil and gas companies – are prototype was tested offshore Norway before taking note. Equinor opened Hywind Scotland, a 30MW ? oat-

Erik Rijkers, Director – Market Development ing wind farm, off Peterhead, Scotland, in 2017.

& Strategy, at Houston-based ? rm Quest Float- PPI’s WindFloat semisub has also seen ser- ing Wind Energy, says, “No doubt the entry vice offshore Portugal and is now being used at of oil and gas players as developers/partners Kincardine Offshore Windfarm Limited’s site in ? oating offshore wind projects has opened near Aberdeen, Scotland. The company, which a few eyes to the acceleration of this industry. is majority owned by Spanish construction com-

Equinor now successfully operates the Hywind pany Cobra Wind International, has planning

Scotland wind park and is planning to apply the consent to build out the site to a 50MW farm concept to reduce the carbon footprint of its oil using 8MW turbines on PPI’s WindFloat design.

and gas operations in Norway, and it looks set Last year, Ideol installed versions of its damp- to be followed by Aker BP.” ing pool demonstrators in the water off France

Equinor’s Hywind Tampen project envisions (Floatgen - concrete) and Japan (Hibiki - steel), the use of 11 ? oating wind turbines to provide while Toda Corporation has the GOTO project power to the Snorre and Gullfaks oil and gas offshore Japan, with up to 10 turbines planned. production facilities in the Norwegian sector of For this and future ? oating offshore wind proj- the North Sea. ects, Toda Corporation has built a dedicated “Italian oil ? rm Repsol and Norwegian 110-meter-long semisubmersible offshore wind contractor Aker Solutions have also joined installation vessel called Float Riser (Hatayashi).

US-based Principle Power Inc. (PPI) while Two further designs are due to enter French

Shell has joined Denmark’s Stiesdal Offshore waters in 2021. EDF Energies Nouvelles’ pilot

Technologies and Sweden’s Hexicon AB,” offshore project Provence Grand Large will com- adds Rijkers. prise three Siemens Gamesa 8.4MW turbines 28 OFFSHORE ENGINEER OEDIGITAL.COM