Hywind Pilot Project En Route to Scotland
Wednesday 19 July 2017
The first of five turbines for Statoil’s Hywind floating wind pilot project is on its way from Stord, Norway, to its final destination Buchan Deep, east of Peterhead in Scotland.
Hywind consists of a turbine placed on top of a ballasted steel cylinder. The first floating turbine unit will be fastened to the seabed by three mooring lines.
The sailaway started just before midnight 18 July and is estimated to take 4-5 days, said Statoil. The turbine is 253 meters tall, weight is around 12.000 tonnes, and has a rotor diameter of 154 meters.
All five turbines were assembled onshore and lifted onto their spar-buoy foundations by the heavy-lift vessel Saipem 7000. Now they will be individually towed to Scottish waters.
Each turbine takes 4 days of sailing across the North Sea, said Statoil, adding that at their arrival, work will immediately start on anchor lines installation and hook-up, operations that will take 2-3 days for each turbine.
Turbine installation is scheduled to be finished by end of August.
Meanwhile, said Statoil, loadout of the cables will commence in Halden, Norway.
“The installation vessel will then go to Kristiansand, Norway, to pick up vertical anchors and buoyancy modules before heading to Peterhead for pull-in of the export cable,” said the company.
“The cable will then be laid out to Buchan Deep and second end connected to one of the floating wind turbine. After installing the export cable the remaining four infield cables will be installed in two campaigns planned to be finalised within end of September,” it added.
Statoil is operator for the Hywind Scotland pilot park with a 75% interest, together with Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company, (25%).
The Norwegian giant greenlighted the NKr2bn ($236m) Buchan Deep project, also known as Hywind Scotland, in 2015, with the stated expectation of achieving a per megawatt cost reduction as great as 70% compared to the company's original pilot project.