Hywind Tampen | Ill: Equinor

The exciting future of floating wind power

Floating offshore wind farms may create numerous jobs and spur important technological developments, according to a new report produced by Multiconsult and its partners. Hywind Tampen is part of Equinor’s floating offshore wind power program.

25. March 2019

“Our analyses show that the Norwegian service and supply industry can potentially benefit greatly from Hywind floating wind farm, as it will give them important references in an industry where we expect to see rapid growth over the coming decade”, says Heikki Eidsvoll Holmås, a senior consulting engineer at Multiconsult.

He points out that floating offshore wind is an important, growing market for the company. Multiconsult, together with its partners Future Technology and THEMA Consulting, was responsible for assessing the economic and secondary economic impacts of the project, within the framework of Equinor’s impact assessment report.

Hywind Tampen is expected to promote innovation and generate the knowledge needed to make floating offshore wind commercially viable, while also putting Norwegian suppliers in a strong position to compete in the future market for deliveries to Norwegian and international floating offshore wind projects.

The world’s biggest
Hywind Tampen, with a rated capacity of 88 MW, is set to become the world’s biggest floating wind farm if it starts operating in 2022, and it will be three times bigger than Equinor’s Hywind Scotland (30 MW), which is currently the only floating wind farm in the world.

The plan is to connect the wind farm to the five Gullfaks and Snorre oil platforms in order to supply them with wind power and thus reduce annual CO2 emissions by an average of at least 200,000 tonnes. The partners in these licences are Equinor, Petoro, Exxon Mobil, Idemitsu, DEA Norge, Point Resources and OMV. Equinor is developing the project on behalf of the licence owners.

Technological development
Hywind Tampen may generate knowledge and spur technological development. The technology used in floating wind farms can be developed and provide a basis for new industries.

This will in turn make it possible to exploit Norwegian business resources and generate new business activity. In addition, the process of developing new technology to integrate wind power with gas in an isolated small grid may enable industries other than the oil and gas sector to benefit from technology transfer.

Secondary economic impacts
Based on the estimated investment and operating expenses, the report calculates that the secondary economic impacts of the Hywind Tampen project itself include generating up to 3,000 full-time equivalent jobs at Norwegian businesses and a significant contribution to gross domestic product (GDP). Most of the secondary impacts will be made during the construction phase of the project. Looking at the long term impacts, floating offshore wind may develop into a big industry in Norway and thus create many jobs and generate significant revenues.

Find out more: