During a recent ceremony at sea attended by Equinor officials and Norwegian government dignitaries, the country’s Crown Prince Haakon officially opened Hywind Tampen, the world’s largest floating wind farm.
Hywind Tampen is also the world’s first floating wind farm built specifically to power offshore oil and gas installations, and it is now supplying electricity to Equinor’s oil and gas fields Snorre and Gullfaks in the Norwegian North Sea. It is expected to cover about 35% of their annual need for electricity.
With a system capacity of 88 MW, Hywind Tampen consists of 11 wind turbines based on a floating concept developed by Equinor. It will be a test bed for further development of floating wind, exploring the use of new and larger turbines, installations methods, simplified moorings, concrete substructures and integration between gas and wind power generation systems.
In five years, the project went from the drawing board to completion. Norwegian suppliers were awarded 60% of the contract values in the project. This has contributed to new activity, green jobs, local spin-offs and technology development for future floating offshore wind projects in a growing industry.
“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,” says Kjetil Hove, executive vice president for the Norwegian continental shelf in Equinor.
With Hywind Tampen now operational, Equinor is now operating nearly half (47%) of the world’s offshore floating wind capacity.
Photo by Ole Jorgen Bratland / © Equinor
