World’s first floating wind farm starts production in Scotland

The first floating wind farm in the world off the coast of Scotland has started to deliver electricity to the Scottish grid, China’s Xinhua news agency reported its operator, Norwegian multinational oil and gas company Statoil, as saying on Wednesday.

The 30MW wind farm, named Hywind Scotland, is located 25 kilometres offshore Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and will power approximately 20,000 households, Statoil said in a statement.

It is operated by Statoil in partnership with Masdar, a renewable energy company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

“Hywind can be used for water depths up to 800 meters, thus opening up areas that so far have been inaccessible for offshore wind,” Irene Rummelhoff, executive vice president of the New Energy Solutions business area in Statoil, was quoted as saying.

“The learnings from Hywind Scotland will pave the way for new global market opportunities for floating offshore wind energy,” she said.