Floating wind turbines could power five Norwegian North Sea platforms

Equinor has awarded Kvaerner a front-end engineering design (FEED) contract for the planned Hywind Tampen wind power project in the Norwegian North Sea.

Kvaerner’s brief is to mature the design of concrete substructures for potentially 11 wind turbines based on Equinor’s floating offshore wind concept.

The scope includes identifying appropriate construction sites and putting together a plan for the construction and associated cost of the 11 floating concrete substructures.

Peder Christian Melleby, senior vice president Renewables at Kvaerner, said: “Another important part of the FEED contract is to establish an improvement agenda which targets cost and schedule drivers with the purpose of establishing the safest and most cost-efficient concept for project execution.”

Last August, Equinor revealed it was assessing the possibilities of supplying five platforms at the Gullfaks and Snorre fields in the North Sea with power from floating offshore wind.

According to Kvaerner, the oil and gas platforms could be the world’s first to be part-powered by floating wind turbines.

The Hywind’s 8 MW turbines would provide a combined capacity of 88 MW and could satisfy around 35% of the Snorre A and B, and Gullfaks A, B, and C facilities.

During periods of higher wind speed this percentage could be significantly higher.

Kvaerner will investigate how to bring down the serial production cost and execution time for the 11 concrete units.

Source: Offshore Magazine