World's 1st floating wind farm
Scotland is known for their their picturesque highlands, bagpipes, and men in kilts, but now they can add another unique characteristic to that list. Scotland has recently installed a wind farm, that is a group of wind turbines, in the middle of the North Sea and 15 miles off the coast of the town of Petershead. It is the world’s first ever floating wind farm. Currently, the wind farm consists of five wind turbines that are each 830 feet tall, 250 feet of which is submerged below the surface of the water.
Floating wind farms have been shown to be more efficient than regular land wind farms. This is due to the fact that when wind turbines are packed too densely on land or near the coasts, troubling fluid dynamics can kick in and drags will cause less wind to flow where the wind turbines are placed. Floating wind farms are more favorable as it does not have this problem.
Named the Hywind project, this wind farm is the brainchild of Norwegian Oil company Statoil and U.A.E company Masdar. The massive structures were manufactured in Norway and shipped to Scotland where they are tethered to the bottom of the sea by attaching three huge suction anchors that weigh 111 tons each. These weights also keep the turbines upright and stabilizes it while it floats. Once the turbines are connected to the town’s energy grid, it can power up to 20,000 homes. A representative from Statoil, Elin Isakson, said the Hywind project has been 15 years in the making beginning in 2001. A single prototype was produced in 2009 and in 2015, the Scottish government approved funding for the wind farm that is now operating in the North Sea. Each turbine has the ability to pump 6 megawatts of energy into the grid which means the entire wind farm contributes 30 megawatts of energy. When not in use, the energy is stored in large capacity lithium batteries.
This project proves to the world that Scotland is working towards achieving their goal of becoming “zero-carbon” by 2020. Scotland also boasts the world’s first large-scale tidal farm, called the MeyGen tidal stream, that can power 175,000 homes and is currently operating off Scotland’s north coast. In this way, Scotland is a good role model for other countries to make use of their natural resources to fight climate change. Statoil is already looking at Japan, California, and Hawaii as the next possible location for another floating wind farm because of the deep waters surrounding these places.
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However, many countries might have difficulty following Scotland’s example. Although floating wind turbines are cheaper because they do not need to be specifically tailored to the land they stand on, the cost of production is still high. Scotland invested in £190 million on this project, that is around $263 million. Statoil believes the price of floating wind turbines will drop in the future the same way conventional wind turbines are now affordable, but they first need to reach building at scale.
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To summarize, the Hywind project will help other countries by pointing them in the right direction to produce technology that can fight climate change. Many countries can learn from this project and produce better technology for the future of our planet.
