Scotland’s planned wind farm will blow away traditional wind farms

Scotland will be building the world's largest offshore wind farm. Construction will begin next year.

Oil and gas giant Statoil will build a 30MW pilot park consisting of five floating 6MW turbines. The project could eventually generate 135GWh of electricity a year, enough to power nearly 20,000 homes.

This wind farm project is called Hywind Scotland. There are technological differences between the Hywind project and conventional offshore wind farms and the hope is that these differences will yield less expensive energy results in the long run. Until then, renewable energy projects such as Hywind will need lots of seed money.

Last month the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) released a report indicating that floating offshore wind could be a credible, cost-effective form of low-carbon energy for the UK by the mid-2020's.

Swedish floating wind developer Hexicon also threw its support behind the cost competitiveness of floating offshore developments.

Speaking exclusively with edie, Hexicon’s international business development director Maurice Jenkens said: “It’s still a new technology and still needs massive investment to reach this tipping point, but inevitably that’s going to happen. It’s going to take 10 years of massive investment but time is the only real obstacle.”

You can watch a short video about the Hywind project below the fold.