Equinor, Norwegian energy firm, and its partners have officially inaugurated the Hywind Tampen wind farm, the world's largest floating offshore wind farm. The wind farm consists of 11 wind turbines based on the floating Hywind concept, developed by Equinor.

 

Gullfaks and Snorre are the first oil and gas fields in the world to receive power from offshore wind, reducing CO2 emissions.

 

Hywind Tampen has a system capacity of 88 MW and is expected to cover about 35 per cent of the annual need for electricity on the five platforms Snorre A and B and Gullfaks A, B and C. The wind farm is managed from Equinor's office location in Bergen.

 

"Hywind Tampen is expected to reduce CO2 emissions with 200,000 tonnes annually from key oil and gas producers in the North Sea. It is a bold investment in a pioneering project from the Gullfaks and Snorre partnerships and Enova. The project has given us and the supplier industry valuable experience that will be important when we work together to develop offshore wind further in Norway and globally, scaling up for the future. I would like to thank everyone who has contributed, this is an industrial development we can be proud of," says Kjetil Hove, Executive Vice-President for the Norwegian continental shelf in Equinor.

 

In five years, the project has gone from the drawing board to completion. 60 per cent of the contract values in the project have been awarded to Norwegian suppliers. This has contributed to new activity, green jobs, local spin-offs and technology development for future floating offshore wind projects in a growing industry.-TradeArabia News Services