Cobra Group
Cobra Wind commissioned the Kincardine floating wind farm near the Scottish coast for Pilot Offshore Renewables. At 50 MW, it is the biggest facility of its kind.
American Bureau of Shipping or ABS, which classified Kincardine Offshore Wind as the biggest floating wind farm on a global scale, revealed that its installation has been completed. Vestas supplied five V164 turbines of 9.53 MW each, while one V80 machine, with a capacity of 2 MW, has been online since 2018.
The facility was installed across 110 square kilometers in the North Sea, as little as 15 kilometers from Scotland. Turbines were placed on triangular semi-submersible foundations, tugged to position and moored with four lines each to the bottom at depths of 60 to 80 meters.
Turbines are vessels
Pilot Offshore Renewables hired Spanish-based ACS Group’s Cobra Wind to engineer, design, supply, build and commission the offshore wind vessels with a combined capacity of nearly 50 MW. They said the expected annual output would be 218 GWh, equivalent to the electricity consumption of 55.000 Scottish homes.
The six units carry the flags of the Marshall Islands
As the six units are technically vessels, the developers assigned them with flags of the Republic of the Marshall Islands in cooperation with ABS. Pilot Offshore Renewables is controlled by MacAskill Associates and Renewable Energy Ventures.
Kincardine is apparently the first floating wind farm with turbines stronger than 9 MW. Bourbon Subsea Services was responsible for the installation.
China catching up to UK in offshore wind
As for the wider offshore wind market, a new report showed Germany, with 7.7 GW, lost its second place in the world to China in the first half of the year. New regulations in Europe’s largest economy helped to hold construction activities at zero for the third time, World Forum Offshore Wind said.
The United Kingdom remained at the top of the chart with 10.4 GW and China reached 7.9 GW as it added 834 MW this year through the end of June. However, the most populous nation has 5.3 GW in the pipeline compared to Britain’s 3.7 GW. The Netherlands is fourth in the list with 2.6 GW installed in total.
More than 10 GW is under construction, of which 53% is in Chinese waters
The world’s offshore wind capacity climbed to 34.1 GW, compared to 4.8 GW from 2012. There are currently just 169 such facilities worldwide. More than 10 GW is under construction, of which 53% is in Chinese waters.
Hornsea 2 in the UK is the biggest offshore wind plant currently under construction. Its planned capacity is 1.4 GW. The project comprises 165 Siemens Gamesa turbines.
The world boosted the capacity by just 1.6 GW in the first half, which is a slowdown. Six wind farms were built: in China, Denmark, the Netherlands and Taiwan.
The European Union intends to increase the capacity 25 times to 300 GW by 2050. The European Parliament warned in July of the negative impacts of new offshore wind farms on fisheries in the European Union’s waters.
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