The European Marine Energy Centre (EMEC), based in Orkney, Scotland, has concluded concept design for a new 100MW floating offshore wind test and demonstration site.
EMEC is aiming to secure a lease for a site around 20km west of Orkney, further out to sea from its existing wave energy test facility at Billia Croo.
Its proposed test site will comprise six berths for floating offshore wind turbines of up to 20MW rated capacity. With water depths of 80-95 meters, large waves and a mean windspeed of 10.7 m/s, the site will offer floating wind developers representative metocean conditions to those in ScotWind, Celtic Seas and future leasing rounds. Four of the six berths will be grid-connected, while the final two will be reserved for alternative applications such as hydrogen generation.More than 25GW of floating wind is due to be deployed in UK waters over the next 20 years. The site has been designed specifically for floating wind developers to de-risk their technologies, putting turbines, floating structures, moorings and other components to the test in an energetic offshore environment, which will enable performance to be refined on a wide range of floating wind technologies prior to commercial scale-up and build-out. As well as being a catalyst for floating wind R&D and innovation, the test site will make full use of Scapa Flow and plans for it to become an offshore wind hub, supporting future job creation and supply chain development. This will help capture and retain economic benefit from commercial offshore wind projects in Orkney and the Highlands and Islands. Xodus Group (Xodus) has provided expert support through the initial design phases and both parties are working to establish a longer-term collaboration with the award-winning X-Academy initiative, ensuring that the facility plays a key role in developing the skills needed to grow the sector. Neil Kermode, Managing Director at EMEC said, “Floating wind will have a large role to play in our future energy mix so we’re gearing up to support development of the sector. We’re looking at how we can use our existing testing infrastructure for floating wind subsystem testing, as well as developing a new test site to enable full-scale demonstrations ahead of commercial deployments around Scotland.”He said floating wind is still in relative infancy with limited experience globally of deploying and operating technologies in high energy conditions.
“EMEC’s new demonstration site will provide developers with a highly comparable testing ground to proposed project locations prior to large-scale roll out,” he said. “This testing will enable companies to de-risk projects helping to satisfy technical due diligence requirements and make financing easier and cheaper.“We know the demand is there, we’ve had a stream of requests over the last few years from wind developers seeking a test site to help them commercialise their technologies, so this feels like the natural next step in the evolution of EMEC. For Scotland to be ready for ScotWind, we need to be testing these technologies and developing our supply chains now.”Peter Tipler, Managing Director at X-Academy said EMEC’s ambition to create a floating wind test site has been an innovation project for Xodus to support and will be key to de-risking the sector in future.
He said, “There’s a huge opportunity here for Orkney to capitalise on the ScotWind developments and become a base for supply chain and assembly. As EMEC has demonstrated with the operation of its wave and tidal testing infrastructure, and more recently hydrogen demonstration projects, a floating wind test site will act as a catalyst for jobs, skills and supply chain development helping to retain economic benefit locally.
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