First floating wind farm in the world starts production in Scotland

The world's first floating wind farm started construction back in 2015 off the shore of Scotland. Two years later the plant is now starting production and is the first floating wind farm in the world to do so. The power it creates will be sent to the Scottish electric grid and will power 20,000 households.

The floating wind farm is called Hywind Scotland and the tech behind the floating plant can be used in water up to 800 meters deep. The onshore operations that go with the Hywind Scotland floating wind farm are located in Peterhead with an operations center in Great Yarmouth. To support the power collection capability of Hywind Scotland, Statoil and Masdar, partners on the floating wind plant, will also install batteries to store the power.

The battery facility is called Batwind and is a 1MWh Lithium battery storage solution. The battery facility promises to mitigate intermittency and optimize output. The Hywind Scotland floating wind farm can generate 30MW of energy.

Statoil wants to reduce the costs of generating the clean and renewable wind energy to €40-60 MWh by 2030. Since the floating wind farm can operate in much deeper water than the traditional bottom fixed wind farms, it is expected to play a significant role in the growth of wind power moving forward.

Statoil also has an offshore wind farm in the UK called the Dudgeon offshore wind farm that is in production. The company is also planning a 40% share in a massive solar electricity plant in Brazil that will generate 162MW.

SOURCE: Statoil