Energy consultancy company Lloyd’s Register (LR) will be providing design consultancy for the control room which is part of Equinor's Hywind Tampen project, the world’s first floating wind farm to power offshore oil and gas platforms.
The wind farm will consist of 11 wind turbines based on the Hywind wind farm concept developed by Equinor. The 8 MW floating turbines will have a total capacity of 88 MW and meet about 35 percent of the annual power demand of the five platforms Snorre A and B and Gullfaks A, B and C.
The wind farm will be located around 140 kilometers from shore, between the Snorre and Gullfaks platforms, at a water depth of 260 to 300 meters.
Operated from Equinor’s offices in Bergen, Hywind Tampen is scheduled for start-up at the end of 2022.
Lloyd’s Register has won a contract for Human-Machine Interface (HMI) engineering services - part of an integrated scope awarded to Wood by Equinor to support the Hywind Tampen.
As part of the project, LR will provide consultancy design services for integration into the existing onshore wind control room (OCR) for Hywind Tampen, which will be co-located with an existing OCR for Valemon, a normally unmanned offshore installation in the North Sea. The LR team will also provide human factor analysis for the new OCR, as well as existing OCRs for four platforms. LR
LR has said its specialist human factors consultancy team helps operators create work environments that are safe, user-friendly, and built to operate as efficiently as possible.
"This involves assessing human behaviors and carrying out a detailed breakdown of tasks typically conducted in the work environment, as well as an evaluation of technical systems, identifying information and data users’ needs and workplace design," LR said.
Tristan Chapman, SVP Clean Energy and Innovation at Lloyd’s Register commented: "The Hywind Tampen project addresses some of the industry’s biggest challenges – a key one being the integration of digitization and decarbonization. The work we are undertaking, providing design consultancy for the existing OCR and human factor analysis, will help support Equinor’s wider decarbonization agenda. By developing unmanned solutions for power generation, the industry can start to make some real cost savings.”
The Hywind Tampen is project is part of Equinor’s climate ambitions to reduce the absolute greenhouse gas emissions from its operated offshore fields and onshore plants in Norway by 70% by 2040 and to near zero by 2050.
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