Happy Birthday Hywind Wind Farm, Happy Birthday to You!

We are going to have to work with the sea to take carbon emissions to zero.

Image above: The Hywind Scotland Wind Farm, the world’s first commercial floating offshore wind farm, has just completed its fifth year of producing enough electricity to meet the needs of 34,000 homes. Photo courtesy of Equinor - https://www.equinor.com/ - Copyright © Equinor

By REG CROWDER

The Hywind Scotland Wind Farm, the world’s first commercial floating offshore wind farm, just had its fifth birthday. I think the whole world should be celebrating.

This floating offshore wind technology can’t be dismissed as a theoretical exercise any more. It actually works. I am SO relieved!

If you follow renewable energy closely, you’re going to hear a lot about floating wind farms for the next few years. There’s a reason for that: The technology opens a lot of new options and overcomes a lot of obstacles.

Because floating wind farms are anchored to the sea bottom with cables rather than rigid frameworks, they can be installed in much deeper water than those that rely on rigid structures. That gets them further away from the shore and reduces the likelihood of the wind farm interfering with activities closer to shore. Beyond that, they can be installed further at sea to gain access to more wind and, of course, more energy. 

And let’s not forget that oceans cover just over 70% of the Earth’s surface. Finding a way to get the wind farms into deeper water buys us a lot of new “elbow room” for our technology

In theory, the plans for floating wind farms looked like they would work when presented as proposed pilot projects.. But would they really work in the real world in a place famous for its fierce storms, the North Sea? Five years ago the Hywind Scotland Wind Farm about 18 miles off the coast of Peterhead, Scotland, was commissioned and started generating electricity. And five years later it is still up and running and generating enough electricity to meet the needs of about 34,000 homes.

In the offshore wind industry it is customary to refer to offshore wind farm technology as “offshore wind.” When possible, I will embrace that practice in the rest of this discussion.

Despite waves at times almost 10 meters (33 feet) high, Hywind Scotland has been converting a remarkable proportion of the wind that it captures to electricity. The metric for this efficiency is called the capacity factor. This metric is calculated by dividing the average amount of power generated by the maximum rated capacity of the wind turbines.

The University of Michigan Center for Sustainable Systems  said in its “Wind Energy Factsheet”  [Pub. No. CSS07-09] published in 2021 that by 2022 newly-built offshore wind projects could be expected to reach a 51% capacity factor. The Hywind Scotland offshore wind project HAS ALREADY TOPPED THAT! Hywind Scotland which was placed in commercial service five years ago has achieved an average 54% capacity factor over the five years it has been operating.

This offshore wind project was built by Equinor [https://www.equinor.com/], a global energy company headquartered  in Stavanger, Norway, with the strong support of the Scottish Government [https://www.offshorewindscotland.org.uk/] which has many more offshore wind projects planned to harvest energy from the wind to make life better and more prosperous for the people of Scotland.

William Munn, plant manager of Hywind Scotland, said the experience of operating this offshore wind facility has given Equinor a deep understanding of how to cope with harsh weather, powerful winds and enormous waves:

“Operating the Hywind Scotland project for the past five years has informed Equinor of some of the unique challenges associated with a floating wind farm, and the rewards if we get it right. Because of its location and the harsh weather conditions it encounters, Hywind Scotland has exposure to higher wind speeds than we typically see on a fixed-bottom wind farm, but also has to withstand large waves, while continuing to produce power with wave heights of 10 meters. Due to the environment, unique operations and maintenance methods have been required, such as a high-performance crew transfer vessel that can continue operations in higher-than-standard transfer conditions.”

And Equinor isn’t keeping all of that it has learned to itself. The company is publishing its operational data on Hywind Scotland online so it can be used by academic researchers and energy sector suppliers. [And ME! I didn’t ask anybody for permission. I just went to the website and spent some time reviewing the operational data, to make sure it really was there. It was!}

If you want to get really serious about digging into the operational data, start at this URL:   https://pod.ore.catapult.org.uk

This is what Sebastian Bringsværd, then-head of Floating Wind Development at Equinor, now with Aker Offshore Wind, had to say when  this extraordinary level of transparency was put into practice:

“This initiative shows Equinor’s strong commitment to support dissemination and education in the UK and abroad, as well as providing a platform for collaboration across the floating wind supply chain. Floating offshore wind is a cornerstone in our renewable strategy to become an offshore wind major and we believe this technology will play a key role in delivering the UK’s Sector Deal and decarbonisation goals.”

Bottom line: The real-world success of Hywind Scotland is something to celebrate.

— Reg Crowder Twitter: @RegCrowder Mastodon:  reg_crowder@mastodon.world