The Navantia-Windar consortium has loaded out the first two of the five SPAR-type floating foundations built for Statoil’s 30MW Hywind Scotland floating wind farm.
The two floating foundations were rolled out and loaded onto the semi-submersible vessel Albatross at Fene shipyard on Monday, 8 May. This was the first load-out operation of its type carried out at the Fene shipyard, the Spanish consortium said.
Each of these structures is 91 metres long, with a diameter of 14.8 metres and a weight of 3,450 tonnes.
The remaining three foundations will be shipped out at the end of May and at the beginning of June.
The units will be transported to the assembly base in Stord, Norway, where they will be floated and verticalized using ballast water and aggregates, reaching a draft of more than 75 metres.
Statoil has already started assembling the five Siemens 6MW turbines and turbine towers in Stord. The turbines will be mounted onto the floating foundations, towed to the installation site some 25 kilometres off the coast of Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, and anchored in water depths exceeding 100 metres.
The wind farm, owned by Statoil (75%) and Masdar (25%), is expected to be commissioned in late 2017.
Photos: Navantia