The installation of the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm, the ABS-Classed Kincardine Offshore Wind, has been completed off the coast of Scotland.
The floating offshore wind farm with a nominal capacity of 50 MW is located approximately 15km off the southeast coast of Aberdeenshire, in northeast Scotland. The windfarm sits in water depths ranging between 60m to 80m. The wind farm consists of a 2 MW Vestas turbine and five 9.5 MW Vestas turbines. It is expected to generate up to 218GWh of clean electricity a year, which will be enough to power approximately 55,000 Scottish households, reported the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS).
The Kincardine floating offshore wind farm is being developed by Kincardine Offshore Wind, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pilot Offshore Renewables (POR), while the Madrid-based company Cobra Wind is responsible for the engineering, design, supply, construction, and commissioning of the floating wind farm.
Meanwhile, the Navantia-Windar consortium in Spain manufactured the floating wind foundations. They were then transported to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where the wind turbines were mounted on the foundations.
“This exciting project demonstrates the potential of floating turbines, and we are confident they will have an increasingly prominent role to play in the development of sustainable energy all over the world,” said Matthew Tremblay, ABS Senior Vice President, Global Offshore.
Floating wind technology is expected to be deployed at a utility-scale by 2024. Many companies and organizations are shifting their focus to floating offshore wind farms, including GE, which introduced its massive floating offshore wind turbine concept in May this year, and MingYang Smart Energy Group that launched the world’s largest offshore Hybrid Drive wind turbine this month.
