Equinor considers constructing a floating wind farm to power North Sea oilfields
GCE NODE was at the Offshore Northern Seas (ONS 2018) event in Stavanger last month to promote the PERISCOPE project
The event coincided with news from Equinor that it would be exploring the possibility of deploying floating offshore wind to power its oil and gas production platforms in Norway. The project would consist of 11 wind turbines based on Equinor’s floating offshore wind concept, Hywind. The 8 MW turbines would have a combined capacity of 88 MW, enough to meet about 35% of the annual power demand of the five platforms. Hywind Scotland has already proved a great success. Equinor is now looking to take this a step further in what will be the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm. Thanks to a pipeline of projects, European floating offshore wind capacity is expected to grow to 350 MW as soon as 2021.
The news came on the back of a previous announcement by the Norwegian Minister of Petroleum and Energy, Terje Søviknes, that Norway is set to unveil two sites for floating offshore wind plants later this year.