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Data from world’s first floating windfarm shared for free

Equinor and Masdar, the owners of the world’s first floating windfarm, have partnered with the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult to share operational data from the project for free.

Hywind Scotland is located 25 kilometres off the coast of Aberdeenshire and consists of five turbines with a combined generation capacity of 30MW. It was officially opened by Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon in October 2017.

Information on the performance one of the turbines will be made available to businesses and academics through the catapult’s Platform for Operational Data (POD). The aim is to help lower the cost of floating wind and make it competitive with other generation technologies.

“This initiative shows Equinor’s strong commitment to support dissemination and education in the UK and abroad, as well as providing a platform for collaboration across the floating wind supply chain,” said Sebastian Bringsvaerd, head of floating wind development at Equinor.

“Floating offshore wind is a corner stone in our renewable strategy to become an offshore wind major and we believe this technology will play a key role in delivering the UK’s sector deal and decarbonisation goals.”

Chris Hill, operational performance director at the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult, said: “The inclusion of free to use operational data from Hywind Scotland will be a great addition to our POD service, and greatly enhance our offering to our users. Big data is transforming our understanding of how wind farms work, and therefore our approach to building, operating and maintaining them.”

The windfarm was upgraded with a 1MW battery storage system dubbed “Batwind” in June 2018.