Where are these floating wind turbines?
Sweden, of course.
That’s who we’re referring to in the title – ABBA revolutionised music in the 1970s and are still going strong, ergo IKEA, famed for flatpacks and meatballs. Until recently, we had an IKEA Click and Collect in Norwich, but it’s gone to retail heaven with the likes of BHS, Woolworths and Debenhams, locally. We now have a 100 mile trek for a flatpack fix to either Thurrock or Milton Keynes.
But.
We digress.
Sweden has recently made news in the offshore wind industry with plans for floating wind turbines in the Baltic Sea.
Now their construction has not been outsourced to IKEA, but are instead coming from the Ireland-based renewable energy company Simply Blue Group, in collaboration with the renewable energy consulting firm Wind Sweden.
Exciting times ahead for the offshore wind industry.
What is more exciting is the ambitious scale of the projects for floating wind turbines.
Almost 5 gigawatts are expected to be generated at the two projects near Stockholm and Gotland, adding renewable power to the giant Lillgrund project, developed by Vattenfall.
Simply Blue’s Director of Market Development, Adrian de Andres, explains:
“Floating wind has an important role to play in the Swedish Energy mix as well as Nordpool given it can be located further from shore and therefore its visual impact is significantly reduced. Our project selection has focused on sites that we believe are environmentally friendly and at the same time technically and commercially feasible.”
Floating wind turbines are being touted as a big part of the future of renewable energy and with good reason. They are cheaper to engineer, install and maintain. They make a lower visual impact on people as they can be located further from shore. They also take advantage of stronger winds, further out at sea. The technology is more modern too, as prototypes of floating wind turbines were only developed in 2007, and commissioned in 2017. The concept of a floating wind turbine, however, was mooted in 1972, a year before ABBA became a household name.
The world’s first commercial floating offshore windfarm, Hywind Scotland, was commissioned in 2017.
It uses 5 Siemens turbines of 6 MW each, has a capacity of 30 MW and is sited 18 miles (29 km) off Peterhead. The project also incorporates a 1 MWh lithium-ion battery system (called Batwind).
Perhaps now, we can add the floating wind turbine facts to the usual ones about IKEA and ABBA.
To finish off this Swedish blog post, we thought we’d end with five other lesser known things about Sweden:
- Over 50% of Sweden is covered in forest
- Julmust outsells Coca Cola (Julmust is a fermented, though alcohol-free, malt drink similar to root beer)
- Sweden has the world’s largest scale model of the solar system
- Stockholm’s metro doubles as an art gallery (yes really)
- Fika does exist. Breaks are baked into the culture. The practice is called Fika and it’s a recognised break twice daily where workers enjoy coffee, cake and chat.
Perhaps we should introduce Fika in the UK?
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