Equinor has pressed pause on the installation of the final few turbines for the Hywind Tampen project, a floating wind boss at the company has confirmed.
With the best of the North Sea weather now done for the year, Sonja Chirico Indrebo recently revealed the four remaining units will be stowed near the shore for the next few months.
They are scheduled to be fitted in the spring when conditions are more favourable.
Equinor hit the investment green button on Hywind Tampen, which will be the world’s first floating wind farm to power oil and gas assets, three years ago.
A short time later Covid-19 locked down much of Europe, and all but essential work was placed on the backburner.
Speaking at a recent industry conference, Ms Indrebo said: “We are slightly delayed, only by a few weeks, but unfortunately that means we’ve hit the weather window.
“We have four turbines that have been completed but they will have to stay over winter near shore, and we will hook them up in spring.”
As it stands, seven of the floating turbines for Hywind Tampen have been fitted in Norwegian waters.
It means that over the winter, the development will be running at 60 megawatt (MW) capacity – when the remaining units are fitted that will rise to 95 MW.
Hywind Tampen will supply green energy to the Snorre and Gullfaks fields, helping the Norwegian energy giant to decarbonise its oil and gas operations.
It will also become the world’s largest floating wind farm, leapfrogging the Kincardine project off Aberdeenshire.
Ms Indrebo said: “This wind farm is currently being powered up, and we now have seven turbines in the ocean in situ. Export cables to the oil and gas installations are being installed.”
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