Siemens is to supply turbines for Norwegian major Statoil's floating offshore wind turbine project off the coast of Scotland.
The wind turbine manufacturer will supply the 30MW Hywind Scotland Project with five SWT-6.0-154 direct drive offshore wind turbines.
The turbines will be installed on floating foundations operating in 90-120m water depth 25km off the coast of Peterhead in Aberdeenshire. For the new Hywind Scotland Project, assembly in West Coast Norway is scheduled for 1H 2017.
In 2009 Statoil and Siemens successfully installed a 2.3MW Siemens turbine at the first floating full-scale wind project worldwide, Hywind Demo.
This Scottish pilot project demonstrates how future floating concepts for commercial and large scale offshore wind parks can be both cost efficient and low risk. The floating foundations are ballast-stabilized and fastened to the seabed with mooring lines. With their lightweight nacelles, Siemens large direct drive wind turbines are particularly suited for the floating foundations designed as slender cylinder structures. This concept has already proven its effectiveness in the 2009 project. At the same time Siemens gathered a lot of experience on the specific requirements regarding the control parameters on a moving wind turbine under offshore conditions. For the floating installation Siemens’ technicians developed new controller settings for rotor pitch and yaw drive regulation.
"We are proud to once again be on board the floating wind project with Statoil, and to apply the experience we gained with the first full scale floater,” said Morten Rasmussen, Head of Technology at Siemens Wind Power and Renewables Division. “Hywind Scotland is another pioneering project and has the potential to become a trailblazer for future floating wind projects.”