Equinor Scraps its Spar Design for Floating Offshore Wind Bid
November 10, 2021 Maritime Safety News
Norwegian oil major Equinor has unveiled a new floating wind platform design that it will incorporate into its bid for the massive ScotWind offshore lease offering. The design represents a departure from Equinor’s unique and well-known Hywind spar platform, which it used for its Hywind Scotland demonstration project.
Equinor’s new “Wind Semi” is a standard semisubmersible wind turbine foundation, with three floatation columns connected by steel beams. Illustrations suggest a strong resemblance to other firms’ floating-wind designs, like the Principle Power model used at the Kincardine Offshore Wind Farm.
If Equinor is successful in its bid, it plans to install a one gigawatt floating offshore wind farm in a single project. According to Equinor, the new semisubmersible platform has been designed specifically to suit local fabrication and assembly capabilities in Scotland, allowing for more local content.
“By leveraging our twenty years of floating offshore wind experience and innovations, we plan to develop GW-size floating projects in one single phase,” says Sonja C. Indrebø, Equinor VP of floating offshore wind. “This project would be over 30 times bigger than Hywind Scotland, the UK’s and Equinor’s first floating project, and [would] have the potential to not only position Scotland as a leader in deep water technology, but also create opportunities for both existing suppliers and new entrants.”
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