The first of five turbines for Statoil's Hywind Scotland pilot floating offshore wind park has left Stord, Norway, for its final destination, the Buchan Deep, 25km east of Peterhead in Scotland.
Once operational, the Hywind Scotland pilot park will be the world’s first commercial floating windfarm, sitting in 95-120m water depth.
The sailaway started just before midnight 18 July and is expected to take 4-5 days. The 154m-diameter turbine, mounted on a spar hull structure, is 253m tall and weighs about 12,000-tonne.
All five turbines were assembled outside Stord, Norway this summer, before their journey across the North Sea.
Once in place, work will start to install anchor lines and perform hook-up, an operation that takes 2-3 days for each turbine. Turbine installation is scheduled to be finished by end of August.
Parallel with this activity, loadout of the cables will commence in Halden, Norway. The installation vessel Skandi Acergy 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. 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 finalized within end of September. Cable trenching will be done by Fugro Subsea's Fugro Saltire.
Partners are Statoil (75%) and Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy company (25%).
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