In May 2022, Montpellier held the FOWT, the world’s largest floating offshore wind event of its kind, with many industry luminaries such as: Elisabeth Sæther, Norwegian State Secretary for Energy; Sophie Mourlon, Director for Energy at the French Ministry for the Ecological Transition; and Ivan McKee, Minister for Business, Trade, Tourism and Enterprise in the Scottish Government.

We’ve written many times before about the advent of floating wind turbines, and it is a development that world leaders are keen to embrace. Fixed wind turbines need shallower waters to place and fix them in. Meaning that deeper oceans like the Atlantic (and parts of the Mediterranean Sea) become economically and logistically unviable. But floating wind turbines don’t require any tethering to a deep ocean bed, so their introduction is only set to grow, exponentially, too, with lower impact on marine ecology.

Europe is, perhaps, unsurprisingly, leading the way with 113 MW of generated power as we write.  But this is set to triple by 2024 with 330 MW of floating wind operations.

As reported in evwind.es

Norway is now building the world’s biggest floating wind farm, Hywind Tampen (88 MW). France will have four small projects of around 30 MW each up and running within 2 years. By 2024 Europe will have 330 MW of floating wind in operation.

Sweden is following suit as you can read here.

All excellent news for our industry and the planet itself. 

This news relates perfectly too to the work Steve and the team have done in Kincardine, the small port town on the north shore of the Firth of Forth, in Fife.

Our team carried out the creation of a management system to facilitate the Operations and Maintenance phase of the largest offshore floating windfarm in the world, whilst providing HSEQ management and asset walkdowns at Kincardine, a project we’re very proud of.

If you’re not too familiar with Kincardine, let’s offer a summary of it. It is a pioneering 50 MW floating wind far, just 15KM off the coast, on “semi-submersible platforms. It is fairly new, having started operational output in October 2021 and is owned by Spain’s ACS Group, a global giant. The wind farm is currently under repair too, as a major component in one of the five V164-9.5MW Vestas turbines at the site is understood to be in need of replacement. The good news is that this is not expected to take long and the remaining four turbines will continue to export power.

The work at Kincardine, across Europe and the world on floating wind turbines is something we welcome at HSEQ-360 Limited. The benefits of floating wind farms are manifold, such as:

  • Reduced installation and maintenance costs
  • Lower environmental impact
  • Favourable impact on the local economy
  • Placement in deep sea areas

If you’d like support with any aspect of Health, Safety, Environmental, Quality Assurance, Operational And Engineering Solutions, connect with Steve and the team on LinkedIn and contact us today.