Statoil Floats First Hywind Scotland Foundations off Stord

The first two of the five SPAR-type floating foundations built by the Navantia-Windar consortium for Statoil’s 30MW Hywind Scotland floating wind farm have arrived to the project’s assembly base in Stord, Norway.

The two floating foundations were loaded onto the semi-submersible vessel Albatross at Navantia’s Fene shipyard in Spain in early May.

The two foundations were unloaded off Stord last week and at least one of them has already been verticalized using ballast water and aggregates, reaching a draft of more than 75 metres.

Each of these structures is 91 metres long, with a diameter of 14.8 metres and a weight of 3,450 tonnes.

The remaining three foundations will be shipped out from the Fene shipyard at the end of May and at the beginning of June.

The floating foundations will support five Siemens 6 MW turbines. The assembled units will be towed to the installation site some 25 kilometres off the coast of Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, and anchored in water depths exceeding 100 metres.

The wind farm, owned by Statoil (75%) and Masdar (25%), is expected to be commissioned in late 2017.