Hywind Pilot Park is the world’s biggest floating wind farm and is located at Buchan Deep in the North Sea, approximately between 25km and 30km off the coast of Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.
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Equinor (Statoil) holds a 75% stake in the project, while the remaining 25% stake is held by Masdar. Hywind (Scotland) (HSL), a subsidiary of Equinor developed the offshore floating wind farm.
The approximately Nkr2bn ($23.03m) project aims to demonstrate cost-efficient and low-risk solutions for commercial-scale wind parks.
Equinor made the final investment decision (FID) to construct the wind farm in November 2015. The Scottish Government granted approval for the construction of the 30MW project in the same month.
The facility began production in October 2017 and is expected to supply clean power to approximately 20,000 households. It is anticipated to offset 42,942t of CO2 and 999t of SO2 emissions a year during its designed operational lifespan of 20 years.
A 1MW battery system named Batwind was connected to the Hywind Park in June 2018. Designed by Younicos, it is the first battery storage system connected to a floating wind farm.
Hywind Pilot Park location and structure
The Hywind Pilot Park wind farm extends over 4km² area in water depths between 95m and 120m. The location witnesses an average wind speed of 10m/s.
The wind farm includes five 6MW SWT-6.0-154 direct drive floating wind turbine generator (WTG) units. Each 258m-high turbine has a hub height between 82m and 101m, as well as a rotor diameter of 154m.
The turbines are placed between 720m and 1,600m apart and connected by inter-array cables. The electricity generated from the wind farm is transported to a landfall on the coast at Peterhead to the local grid network through an export cable corridor. The transmission voltage of the inter-array and export cables is 33kV.
Batwind storage solution project
The Batwind battery system is expected to integrate power from Equinor’s 30MW Hywind floating wind farm off the coast of Scotland.
The main function of the battery is to ‘learn’ when to hold back and store electricity, and when to transmit power to the grid, thereby increasing the value of the power. Two portable modular battery containers or Younicos Y.Cubes were integrated with project’s onshore substation for the project.
Construction
The onshore construction works on Hywind Pilot Park began in 2016, followed by offshore installation in 2017.
The WTG units were assembled at a deepwater onshore area off the west coast of Norway and transported to the site for installation. Each unit is tied to the seabed by a three-point mooring and anchoring system.
The cable installation works involved the laying of up to 35km of export cables and 15km of inter-array cables. The export cables were buried at a depth of 1.5m under seabed using jet trenchers and mechanical trenchers.
Contractors involved
Siemens was awarded the contract to supply offshore wind turbines for the Hywind Pilot Park project in December 2015.
Statoil developed the wind farm infrastructure, including an onshore switchgear yard, while the grid connection was arranged by SSE.
Isleburn was contracted in November 2015 to provide 15 suction anchors for the project, while Nexans supplied cables.
Lloyd’s Register Energy was contracted to provide risk and emergency preparedness analysis for the project in June 2015.
Aibel was awarded an Nkr40m ($3.8m) contract to provide front-end engineering design (FEED) and engineering and management assistance (EMA) for the substructures of the offshore wind farm in July 2014.
The subcontracts for the completion of substructures for the project were awarded to Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI), Dr.techn.Olav Olsen and Principa North.
Origo Solutions was contracted to develop the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system for the Hywind Pilot Park.
Statoil contracted Younicos to deliver a 1MW battery system for connecting to Hywind Scotland in November 2017.
Younicos parent company Aggreko was engaged to provide power during the installation of the battery system and the wind farm.
