MacGregor, part of Cargotec, has won an order for substructure connection mooring systems for the world's first floating offshore wind farm: Statoil's Hywind pilot park in Scotland.
MacGregor will be responsible for the delivery of the Pusnes substructure mooring connection system for the pilot project's five floating wind turbines. Delivery of equipment is planned from the second through the fourth quarter of 2016 and installation of the wind turbines is scheduled for 2017.
MacGregor will deliver a total of five sets of Pusnes substructure mooring connection systems including instrumentation for load monitoring. The ballast-stabilised turbine structures will each be equipped with a three-point mooring system employing site-specific anchors.
Statoil's floating offshore wind farm will cover an area of about 4.2km² near Buchan Deep, approximately 25km off Peterhead in Aberdeenshire on Scotland's North Sea coast. The 6MW wind turbines will provide enough electricity for 20,000 UK homes. They will operate in waters over 100m deep, that experience an average wave height of 1.8m.
The Hywind project is part of Statoil's activities in New Energy Solutions, the company's business area developing profitable renewable energy and low carbon solutions. It is designed to demonstrate cost-efficient solutions that will enable the commercial capture of wind energy in deep-water environments. Statoil says that the technology to be used in the project has been tested for six years with excellent results in a demonstration project off the coast of Norway.