ScotWind Offshore Wind

ScotWind offshore wind farm field project consists of 15 seabed area rights included in a licensing round and lies off the east and west coast of Scotland, UK, as shown in the map.

Much of the areas are in water depths of 5o – 100 m where both bottom-fixed and floating offshore wind turbines could be an option.

There are large deepwater areas with water depths below 70 meters. The initial planned development is 10000 MW (10 GW) which indicate the need for 6-700 wind turbine foundation structures.

The total capacity of the seabed rights may however be developed up to 26 GW including options.

ScotWind Water Depth Favor Floating Wind

The waters depths at the ScotWind project are 97% deeper than 50 meters, which may limit the used bottom fixed monopiles to only the shallowest areas. Recent studies conclude that less than 5% is suitable for standard monopiles (<50m), 25% is suitable for jacket foundations (50-70m) and the remaining 70% would be most suitable for floating offshore wind (>70m). The used of XXL monopiles that are suitable for 60 meters may replace some of the jacket solutions, however the number of jackets would increase if these were designed suitable for water depths up to 80 meters.

ScotWind Case Study – Foundations and Mooring Concepts

The sandy soil conditions at the offshore wind field favor monopile solutions for the bottom-fix offshore wind turbines, however due to the water depth a jacket solution may be more feasible in most areas. The geotechnical evaluations for each site will conclude if the foundations would favor a gravity based clump weights or suction assisted mooring solution, such as suction buckets for jackets and suction anchors products or caisson for the floating offshore wind concepts. Find out more on how our technology can significantly reduce the mooring cost in harder soil condition.

ScotWind Announcement and 25 GW Auction Results

The results and winners of the 25 GW Scotwind leasing round were announced at the award date 17. January 2022. The Crown Estate Scotland made the announcement that they had awarded 17 offshore wind projects to the bidders that included options. Among the auction result winners for floating wind concept was companies like SSE Renewables, Falck Renewables, Shell New Energies, Vattenfall, DEME, BayWa, Northland Power and Magnora. More than half of the ScotWind wind farms will be floating wind.

ScotWind Cost Reduction and Feasibility Study

Offshore Wind Design AS are patenting and developing several game changing innovations that would be suitable for use as foundations, anchoring or mooring products at the ScotWind offshore wind field. The innovations and technology provide most cost reduction in the sandy soil conditions as it is on most of the field area. A feasibility study using project specific mooring concepts and loads can be done to establish the cost reduction potential using the innovations on your bottom fixed and floating offshore wind concept..