Wind Farm to Power Offshore Platforms Gains Approval

Norway's Ministry of Petroleum and Industry has approved the plans for development and operation of the Hywind Tampen wind farm which will mean the Snorre and Gullfaks platforms will be the first platforms in the world to receive power from a floating offshore wind farm.

The wind farm will consist of 11 wind turbines based on the Hywind wind farm concept developed by Equinor. The 8MW turbines will have a total capacity of 88MW 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.

The Siemens Gamesa SG 8.0-167 DD turbines will be mounted on floating concrete spar substructures with shared anchors supplied by Kvaerner. With a 167 m-diameter rotor and 81.5 m-long blades, each turbine of the wind farm will have a swept area of 21,900 m². The turbines will be connected in a loop by a 2.5 kilometer-long, 66 kV dynamic inter-array cable system.

By reducing the use of gas turbines on the fields, the project will help reduce CO2 emissions by more than 200,000 tonnes per year, corresponding to annual emissions from 100,000 private cars.

The Hywind Tampen investment will be close to NOK 5 billion ($488 million). Norwegian authorities have granted funding of up to NOK 2.3 billion ($225 million) through Enova and the Business Sector’s NOx fund will provide up to NOK 566 million ($553 million).

Hywind Tampen is scheduled for start-up at the end of 2022. According to a study made by Multiconsult, the Hywind Tampen project will create spinoff effects during the project’s life of 1,550 to 3,000 man-years for Norwegian trade and industry. Most of the spinoff effects will occur in the project’s development phase.