The proposed offshore area has the potential to generate 2,400 megawatts of energy by 2030, enough to power 1.2 million homes.

Siemens Gamesa was announced as a winner of the 2017 Popular Science ‘Best of What’s New’ Award in the Engineering category for its contribution to the Hywind Scotland project, operated by Statoil, located 25 kilometers off the coast of Peterhead in Aberdeenshire. The project features five SWT-6.0-154 wind turbines built on floating foundations. Each year beginning in…

Hywind Scotland, the first floating wind farm in the world, has started to deliver electricity to the Scottish grid. The First Minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon, officially opened the wind farm. The 30-MW wind farm, operated by Statoil in partnership with Masdar, is located 25 kilometers offshore Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland and will power approximately…

Europe has led the way, at least partially, because it benefits from large areas of shallow seabed. On average, those turbines are in water just 29m deep. This has made Europe an ideal nursery for the fledgling industry, but once you get to depths greater than 50m, fixed-foundation structures increase in cost and complexity. As a result, advanced economies with deeper coastal waters, such as the US and Japan, have fewer suitable sites for fixed-foundation wind farms. Access to offshore wind energy for such sites will depend heavily on floating structures to support turbines in such deeper waters.
Floating’s advantage

E.ON is setting new standards for the construction and operation of offshore wind farms. The company announced that it is protecting all 60 steel foundations of the Arkona offshore wind park in the German Baltic Sea with a special anti-corrosion coating. During the 25-year operating period, the metal-dissolving corrosion process is expected to slow significantly.…

    Welcome to the 5,000-MW Club, Kansas There’s a new club in town, and another U.S. state has recently joined. The “5,000-Megawatt Club” has an exclusive membership of only five states so far. For entry, each one must officially exceed 5,000 MW of wind-generated capacity. The most recent honor goes to Kansas, which grabbed…

U.S. deepwater offshore floating wind turbine foundation platforms are taking too long to develop. We need them now. One design is readily available.

Often the people responsible for constructing the project, including commissioning, (‘Construction’) will move on to another project quickly and take all that project specific knowledge with them. In comparison, the ‘Operator’ of the asset will be preparing to accept the asset.

The most important key success factor for the future of floating wind turbines is concepts which are cost (LCoE) competitive with bottom fixed foundations.

Once they have contracted to build these offshore wind vessels here, it will be almost impossible for a domestic developer to bid new leases on either coast.

Leading international marine and engineering consultancy LOC Group, at the head of a consortium, has been selected by the Carbon Trust-led Floating Wind Joint Industry Project (JIP) to investigate the infrastructure and logistics challenges faced in the development, construction, and maintenance of utility-scale floating offshore wind farms. The investigation report and recommendations, which has been…

DNV GL has proposed a concept called WIN WIN to better match floating wind-turbine technology with the oil industry’s need for water injection to maximize oil recovery. WIN WIN, which stands for WINd- powered Water INjection, comprises a floating turbine that supplies power to a water injection process. It is a fully stand-alone system that…

The results of the National Grid’s Enhanced Frequency Response (EFR) tender published in August 2016 have come to be seen as something of a pivotal moment for the fortunes of energy storage in the UK.

10 news items regarding logistics in the offshore wind industry.

Three companies, TenneT TSO B.V. (of the Netherlands), Energinet (of Denmark), and TenneT TSO GmbH (of Germany), have signed a trilateral agreement for the development of a large, renewable European electricity system in the North Sea. This so-called ‘North Sea Wind Power Hub’ has the potential to supply 70 to 100 million Europeans with renewable energy…

A rapidly expanding wind-turbine support company has stepped up its investment in Hull after confirming the city as the new home of its head office and winning a major renewables’ industry award. TRG Wind has registered its premises at Tower House Lane Business Park as the head office in a move, which Managing Director David…

Atkins is one of the leading designers of offshore wind farm substation platforms and wind-turbine foundations in Europe. Recent projects include installation of Atkins-designed XL monopile foundations at Statoil’s Dudgeon offshore wind farm, and the installation of the Atkins-designed offshore substations at DONG Energy’s Burbo Bank Extension and Race Bank offshore wind farms in the…

BOEM has received unsolicited lease requests from two companies seeking to develop offshore wind energy on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS). These requests are for areas located offshore New York and Massachusetts and are not in response to a formal call for interest. BOEM has finished its review of the unsolicited lease requests and deemed…

Wind turbines on floating foundations have significant advantages over those rammed into sea floors.

  The first offshore turbines arrived off the coast of New England last year in the form of a $300m utility-scale scheme called Block Island. Now, new projects are starting to follow suit and the U.S. offshore wind industry is starting to gather pace. There is every reason to believe that the United States will…