Mobile Offshore Wind Units project secures Enova grant

Odfjell Oceanwind has secured a pre-project grant from Enova, Norway’s fund for climate and energy technologies, to mature its first commercial contracts for Mobile Offshore Wind Units (MOWUs) and WindGrid for the electrification of oil and gas installations.

The grant is awarded under Enova’s full-scale innovative energy and climate technology program, and the potential funding of the main project will be used to partly finance the construction of Odfjell Oceanwind’s first MOWUs and to integrate the units to oil and gas installations on the Norwegian continental shelf.

The MOWUs are based on Siemens Gamesa’s 11 MW offshore wind turbine generator and Odfjell Oceanwind’s WindGrid hybrid system for integrating the MOWUs into the host platforms’ power system.

According to Odfjell Oceanwind, the WindGrid will allow for gas turbines on the host platform to be stopped in periods with wind power production, thus enabling a 60-70 per cent reduction of CO2-emissions on the oil and gas platforms in the North Sea.

The kr10 million (€957,000) grant will fund part of the engineering and planning activities in the second half of 2021, the company said.

”This award marks another milestone on our roadmap towards commercial floating wind power, and will be an important enabler for us and our customers to progress the first MOWU contracts for oil and gas installations on the Norwegian Continental Shelf,” CEO of Odfjell Oceanwind Per Lund said.

”Our customers have high ambitions for reducing carbon footprint from their activities and our solutions offer an attractive alternative to expensive and controversial electrification by use of shore power cables.”

The main project aims at connecting the first MOWUs to oil and gas installations in 2024.

”There are still a number of technological challenges associated with floating offshore wind, and for Enova it is important to support studies to form a good basis for decision-making so that Odfjell Oceanwind can test and further develop technologies for floating offshore wind,” said Oskar Gärdemann, marketing manager for industry at Enova.