The Hywind Scotland floating wind farm.
Hywind Scotland, the first floating wind farm in the world, has started to deliver electricity to the Scottish grid.
The 30MW wind farm, operated by Statoil in partnership with Masdar, is located 25 kilometers offshore Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland and will power approximately 20,000 households.
In an opening event in Aberdeen, the Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon officially opened the world’s first floating wind farm.
The onshore operations and maintenance base for Hywind Scotland is located in Peterhead, while the operations center is located in Great Yarmouth. Linked to the Hywind Scotland project Statoil and partner Masdar will also install Batwind, a 1MWh Lithium battery storage solution for offshore wind energy.
Battery storage has the potential to mitigate intermittency and optimise output.
In recent years, there have been significant cost reductions in both the onshore and bottom fixed offshore wind sectors. Floating wind is expected to follow a similar downward trajectory over the next decade, making it cost competitive with other renewable energy sources.
Mohamed Al Ramahi, CEO of Masdar, is pointing to that future opportunities are already being assessed.
Hywind Scotland is adding to Statoil’s strong UK presence, and over the last few years Statoil’s footprint has grown in the UK. In Aberdeen over 1500 are employees in the final phase of commissioning the Mariner oil field, one of the largest upstream UKCS developments in the last ten years, due to come onstream in 2018.
