Hywind Tampen
Hywind Tampen is a floating offshore wind farm 140 km off the Norwegian coast in the North Sea owned by the Norwegian state-owned energy company, Equinor. The turbines are mounted on cylindrical concrete spar-buoy foundations.
The wind farm provides electricity for Equinor's Snorre and Gullfaks oil and gas field; Snorre lies just North of the wind farm, and Gullfaks lies just South. Hywind Tampen is the world's first renewable energy power source for offshore oil and gas, and when commissioned was the world's largest floating offshore wind farm. At full capacity, Hywind Tampen will provide 35% of the electricity demand for Snorre and Gullfaks.
Timeline
Equinor started developing and testing offshore wind installations in 2009, with their first 2.3 MW Hywind Demo project outside of Karmøy, south-west Norway. Equinor also owns the world's first commercial floating wind park, Hywind Scotland, off the coast of Peterhead, Scotland, commissioned in 2017. After full implementation and operation of the wind farm, Equinor will stand for 47% of global floating wind capacity.The scheduled power production start was in the 3rd quarter of 2022, but complete installation and operation was not in effect until May 2023. The first power production from Hywind Tampen started in November 2022, and was delivered to Gullfaks A Platform. The windfarm was then connected to the Snorre platforms in May 2023, and officially opened in August 2023. Supply chain issues around steel for the tower sections delayed the final four turbines, meaning they missed the weather window and had to be delayed until spring.
Hywind Tampen has an expected economic lifetime of 19 years, bounded by the respective lifetime of Snorre and Gullfaks operations. Hywind Tampen is therefore expected to be abandoned in 2041.
Design
The offshore wind farm consists of 11 Siemens Games SG 8.0-167 DD turbines with a system capacity of 8 MW. Each wind turbine has three 81.5 m blades with 176 m diameter rotors. The turbines are installed on individual floating cylindrical spar buoy concrete structures that are linked together in a shared anchoring system. The anchors are fixed on the ocean floor at a depth of 260–300 meters.At such water depths, it is not possible to install bottom-fixed solutions, which are the more cost-efficient solution. However, 80% of global offshore wind resources are found in deeper waters, and the wind is generally stronger and more consistent. Installation of floating turbines therefore requires a large technical expertise and investments, but the wind farm has greater potential for electricity generation. Equinor intends to expand their offshore wind capacity while reducing cost, and their main strategy for doing so is to invest in technological improvements and large-scale building projects.
The concrete foundations are tall, with the lower being diameter, and the top section reducing in diameter to. They were constructed using a slip forming method by Aker Solutions, who merged with Kværner in 2020. The bottom was constructed in a dry dock in Stord, before being towed to the Vindafjord where the remainder was built and the mechanical outfitting completed.
The turbines are moored to the seabed using anchors and mooring lines and are held afloat both by tension in the mooring system and buoyancy from gravity. The blade movement is regulated through turbine motion controllers, intended to maximize electricity generation, and reduce strain on the tower from corrosion and rough weather.
The turbines are inter-connected in a loop via a string of eleven long dynamic cables, with a cross-section. There are also two export cables that transport the electricity to the Gullfaks-A and Snorre-A Platforms, at and respectively. The cables are rated at 66 kV, and were produced by JDR Cable Systems in Hartlepool, although the cores were manufactured by parent company TFKable in Bydgoszcz, Poland. The cables lack the capacity to export all the electricity produced by Hywind Tampen when running at full capacity.
Hywind Tampen is a largely unmanned wind farm, with an onshore control room in Bergen, on the western coast of Norway.
Contributing parties
Funding
The final investment decision for the project came in October 2019, with contracts worth NOK 3.3 billion. Equinor received NOK 2,329.8 million in public funding from Enova; a green investment body owned by the Norwegian Ministry of Climate and Environment. Preceding Enova's investment, the project also received a NOK 566 million investment grant from the Norwegian business sector's NOx Fund. Further investment was primarily made by the Snorre and Gullfaks partners: Equinor Energy, Petoro AS, OMV AS, ExxonMobil Exploration and Production Norway AS, Idemitsu Petroleum Norge AS, DEA Norge AS and Vår Energi AS.Provisions of parts and installation
Hywind Tampen has awarded a broad series of multinational companies for the provision of parts and installation of the wind park. DEME Offshore participated in the front-end engineering and design of the windmill structures. Siemens Gamesa was awarded the turbine supply contract and a 5-year maintenance contract for delivering, machine rooms, blades, and towers; seven of which were delivered as planned and in operation in the last quarter of 2022, while the production of the last four lagged behind due to a steel shortage as a result of the war in Ukraine. Their installation was further stalled until the spring of 2023 in anticipation of a manageable weather window. Kværner ASA received the design, construction, and installation contract for the floating substructures. JDR Cable System was awarded the manufacturing contract for the inner array cable network and export cables, with power cores provide by TFKable. Seaway 7 was awarded the contract for their installation. The final array cables were installed by Ocean Installer.Political support
Support from the Norwegian Government
Based on annual revenues from 2018, Equinor was the world's seventh largest transnational corporation in the core industries of the ocean economy, which can be attributed to their oil and gas extraction. Although directly benefitting from oil and gas, the Norwegian government has in recent years focused on developing a large-scale growth of green industries, both as a response to climate change and biodiversity loss and to get a first mover advantage within green industries. Their strategy and focal points can be found in the government's roadmap for green industrial growth. One of its key goals is to make Norway a competitive and leading nation in offshore wind. The oil and gas sector is responsible for approx. ¼ of Norway's total greenhouse gas emissions. The development of the industry and offshore wind technology is therefore the primary initial strategy of the roadmap. Their ambition is to delegate offshore wind areas with the potential of 30 GW production capacity, which is approx. 75% of the current Norwegian energy system capacity. They also highly encourage local supply chain development.Equinor is a state-owned company, so their practices are obligated to be in line with national strategies and policy. Enova's financial support should therefore not as come as a surprise. Hywind Tampen is expected to contribute to 200,000 CO2 and 1,000 NOx yearly emission offsets through reductions in first scope emissions from Snorre and Gullfaks. In addition, the project will be used as a testbed to further develop turbines, installation methods, mooring, structures, integration systems etc. This could potentially reduce the cost of future offshore wind projects while creating new industrial opportunities and licences for Norwegian suppliers of offshore wind technologies. Offshore wind is expected to have a 50-fold growth by 2050.