The Scottish government has approved the world’s largest floating offshore windfarm. The United Kingdom windfarm will be developed off the coast of Peterhead.
Statoil, an oil and gas company, will construct a 30MW pilot park of five floating 6MW turbines. The energy generated by the turbines to power 20,000 homes. This will be the UK’s first floating windfarm, and construction will start in 2016.
“Floating wind represents a new, significant and increasingly competitive renewable energy source. Statoil’s objective with developing this pilot park is to demonstrate a commercial, utility-scale floating wind solution, to further increase the global market potential,” Irene Rummelhoff, executive VP of Statoil.
The project is called Hywind Scotland and is expected to generate more energy at a lower cost for consumers. What’s interesting, Statoil is an oil and gas company, yet they are investing in wind power. If this happened in America, Big Oil would take every opportunity to derail wind power.
For more on this story, visit the Guardian “World’s largest floating windfarm gets green light in Scotland”
