The first turbine tower components built for the world’s first floating wind farm, the 30MW Hywind Scotland, have been loaded onto a cargo ship and are en route to the assembly base in Stord, Norway, according to Navacel, the manufacturer of the towers.
Statoil, the owner and developer of Hywind Scotland, awarded Navacel with the contract to construct five towers which will support the wind farm’s five Siemens 6MW turbines installed 25 kilometres from Peterhead, Aberdeenshire.
The turbine towers have a height of 83 metres with a diameter of 7.5 metres at the base and 4.2 metres at the top, where the turbines will be installed. The weight of each tower is 620 tons.
Navacel’s scope of works includes purchasing of structural materials, the entire manufacturing process of the towers, and the surface treatment process as well as the installation of the electromechanical systems and tower internals including platforms, stairs, lift, lighting, electrical panels and wirings. The company is also in charge of procuring and installing the external platforms, where two cranes will be installed to allow the lifting of operating vessels.
Each tower is divided into four sections and ready to be assembled straight away.
The first tower sections were loaded onto BigLift Shipping’s Traveller directly from the company’s Axpe quay at the Port of Bilbao and shipped out to the NorSea Group’s Stordbase AS.
The towers and the turbines will be mounted on SPAR floating units in water depths of between 90 and 120 metres and distributed in an area of four square kilometres.
The floating wind turbines will have a total height of 258 meters, with 178 metres of the structures floating above water, and the remaining 80 metres submerged underwater.
The EUR 200 million project is scheduled for commissioning in 2017.