The world’s first floating wind farm started producing electricity yesterday, in an advance that experts say takes renewable energy production into a new era.
The five turbines sited 100m above the seabed 16 miles off Aberdeenshire are generating enough power to supply 20,000 homes.
In the world of offshore wind energy, the capacity of 30MW at Hywind Farm is small, but its technology can work at depths of 800m by using ballast and three mooring chains to keep the turbines upright.
These innovations open up huge opportunities for the renewable energy industry, the developer Statoil said. It estimates that 80 per cent of the world’s energy from the oceans lies in deep water.
Offshore wind farms fixed to the seabed, have been developed in relatively
