What is floating offshore wind?
Laurent Domergue, engineering manager, Ossian
From humble windmills to wind turbines, the way we capture and use energy from wind has evolved over the years and continues to do so. Modern wind turbines have been a feature of Scotland’s scenery since the mid-90s. With its undulating landscape, and weather to suit, Scotland is the ideal location for this type of renewable energy. The first ‘fixed’ offshore wind turbine was installed in the mid-00s and has since become a feature on the horizon out to sea.
However, a bottom fixed offshore wind turbine is limited in where it can be located and is restricted by the depth of the sea area in which it can be installed.
Technological developments have led to us developing floating offshore wind turbines. Put simply the turbine will be on a floating base made of steel or concrete, which will be anchored to the seabed by a mooring line.
There are huge advantages of floating offshore wind, ones that will bring commercial benefits to local communities, but also huge benefit to decarbonisation and meeting CO2 reduction targets, something which is very important to us at Ossian.
Tackling the climate emergency
Building floating offshore windfarms means we have access to more of the seabed, the deeper parts of the seabed. Floating offshore wind turbines can be built where waters are too deep for traditional bottom fixed structures, this opens up so much more of the sea for installation and wind farms can be installed much further away from the shore. Deeper waters have the potential of higher wind speed leading to an increased efficiency for the wind turbine generators and will maximise energy production. Ultimately, this will increase the number of homes powered by green energy and will elevate our contribution to decarbonisation and net zero.
Economic boost for the local supply chain
A big difference between a fixed and a floating offshore wind turbine is that the floating wind turbine is installed at the quayside. This means that the installation operation offshore are reduced, minimising the carbon impact and we can also use local contractors to work on the installation. Additionally, existing engineering and manufacturing skills in Scotland, gained from work in the oil and gas industry, can be used to deliver floating offshore wind.
The future
When complete, Ossian will be one of the largest floating offshore wind farms in the world with up to 3.6GW of potential capacity – enough to power up to 6m homes. It is one of the largest lease areas of the ScotWind projects, occupying 858km2 of seabed 84km off the east coast of Scotland.
The scale of Ossian alongside the floating technology we use will make it a game changer in the UK renewable energy sector and a critical driving force behind the journey to net zero offsetting up to 7.5m tonnes of carbon emissions.
