Offshore windfarms are springing up across the North Sea because of the peculiarity of the seabed: in fact the waters are swallow and this allows turbines to be installed. Off coast of Scotland they are installing turbines floating in the sea.
The £200m Hywind project is very innovative because of the pioneering technology involved which uses a 78-metre-tall underwater ballast and three mooring lines that will be attached to the seabed to keep the turbines upright. Furthermore, the developer of this innovation is Norway’s Statoil, which wants to diversify from carbon based fuels.
“If you look at coastlines around the world, there’s few that have sufficient area at depths down to 40 metres so if they want to deploy offshore wind, they need to introduce floating wind,” said Rummelhoff, head of the oil firm’s low-carbon division.
This technology is expected to begin take off in the next decade, in fact the commercialisation of floating turbines means a chance for new countries to emerge as renewable energy leaders.
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