Hywind Scotland, the world’s first commercial-scale floating wind farm, was inaugurated today in Scotland, the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar) has announced.

 

The renewable energy project paves the way for the development of wind energy resources in areas beyond the reach of existing offshore wind technologies, said Masdar, a 25 per cent shareholder in the wind farm alongside Statoil of Norway, which owns 75 per cent of Hywind Scotland. 

 

Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Norway’s Minister for Energy & Petroleum Terje Søviknes attended today’s formal unveiling of the plant. They were joined by Khaled Abdulla Al Qubaisi, CEO of Mubadala Investment Company’s Aerospace, Renewables & Information Communications Technology platform; Rawdha Al Otaiba, deputy head mission, UAE Embassy in the UK; and Mohamed Jameel Al Ramahi, CEO of Masdar. 

 

The completion of Hywind Scotland, together with next month’s inauguration of the Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm off the coast of eastern England, brings the total power generating capacity of the UK-based renewable energy projects in which Masdar is an investor to more than 1 gigawatt (GW), the statement said.

 

Further optimising the output of the wind park by mitigating the intermittency of wind energy, Hywind Scotland will also be connected to a 1 megawatt-hour (MWh) lithium battery. Once installed, the Batwind storage solution will have the same battery capacity as 2 million smart-phones. 

 

“Masdar has a long-standing commitment to renewable energy in the United Kingdom, and we are immensely proud to deliver our first project in Scotland alongside our partners,” said Mohamed Al Ramahi of Masdar. 

 

 

“Hywind Scotland is showing that floating wind technology can be commercially viable wherever sea depths are too great for conventional fixed offshore wind power. This opens up a number of new geographies, and we are already looking at future opportunities with our partners, building on our existing international portfolio in wind energy and solar power.”

 

Al Ramahi said: “The addition of the Batwind battery storage solution adds another exciting dimension to the project by supporting the advancement of a technology with the potential to further improve efficiencies and lower costs for offshore wind.” 

  

Floating around 25 km off the coast of Aberdeenshire in water depths of 95-120 m, Hywind Scotland is now supplying electricity to an estimated 20,000 British households. The project’s five wind turbines, each with a capacity of 6 megawatts (MW), were secured into place in August after being towed across the North Sea from Norway. 

 

Hywind Scotland is Masdar’s third UK-based wind farm. It joins the world’s largest offshore wind power development currently in operation, the 630MW-capacity London Array, and the 420MW Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm, which will be officially launched in November.

 

Besides Hywind Scotland, Masdar is a partner with Statoil in Dudgeon, and the two companies have pledged to collaborate on future renewable energy projects. 

 

The cost of floating wind power technology is expected to follow a similar downward trajectory to that of onshore and bottom-fixed offshore wind power. According to Statoil, the overall offshore wind sector has the potential to grow from a global capacity of 13GW in 2015 to more than 100GW by 2030, with floating wind technology accounting for a significant share of that expansion. – TradeArabia News Service