Renewable Energy World reported that Statoil, the Norwegian state owned energy company, is submitting a commercial lease application to build a floating wind farm off the Maine coast.
Floating Wind Turbine
The “Hywind Maine Project” will have 4 turbines generating up to 12 megawatts of power. The planned site is about 12 nautical miles off the coast from the mainland, and 35 nautical miles from Portland.
This will be the first project in the world using floating wind turbines. The floating wind turbine concept is similar to oil rig platform technology. Having a floating platform means that the turbine can be placed in deeper water, typically further out to sea, where there tends to be more wind.
Cabling will run from the platform across the sea bed to the mainland. Statoil is conducting a feasibility study into linking the wind farm to a proposed 7 gigawatt underwater cabling system connecting other Atlantic wind farm projects.
The lease application is with the US Department of the Interior who are performing an environmental review of the project.
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