Hywind floating offshore wind data to be shared with renewables sector

Supply chain businesses and academics can now access a pre-defined set of full-scale measurements from one of Hywind Scotland’s five turbines for free

Equinor and Masdar have partnered with the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult to share operational data from the world’s first floating offshore wind farm in Scotland.

Supply chain businesses and academics can now access a pre-defined set of full-scale measurements from one of Hywind Scotland’s five turbines for free, through the ORE Catapult’s Platform for Operational Data (POD) service, aiming to foster collaboration and drive innovation in the floating offshore wind sector.

The shared long term goal is to reduce the cost of floating offshore wind, making the technology a cost-competitive industrial solution.

Sebastian Bringsværd, Head of Floating Wind Development at Equinor said: “This initiative shows Equinor’s strong commitment to support dissemination and education in the UK and abroad, as well as providing a platform for collaboration across the floating wind supply chain.

“Floating offshore wind is a corner stone in our renewable strategy to become an offshore wind major and we believe this technology will play a key role in delivering the UK’s Sector Deal and decarbonisation goals.”

The POD service is designed to offer comprehensive data sets from offshore wind demonstrator sites and aims to improve the understanding of how offshore wind farms operate in real-world conditions and support innovative research, projects and product development.

Chris Hill, ORE Catapult’s Operational Performance Director, added: “The inclusion of free to use operational data from Hywind Scotland will be a great addition to our POD service and greatly enhance our offering to our users. Big data is transforming our understanding of how wind farms work and therefore our approach to building, operating and maintaining them.

“Our POD service was the first to offer, for a nominal charge, open access data sets from our operational offshore turbine based at Levenmouth for the benefit of the wider industry, academic and research communities and we hope to expand the data sets available in the future.”

Latest Podcast