Presentations

Abstract

Put into the waters West of the Norwegian coast in 2009, the then-called Hywind Demo was the first floating offshore wind turbine in the world. In 2009, it was made and operated by Equinor as a demonstrator for the later Hywind Scotland and Hywind Tampen projects. The floater is a Spar-type, 100m deep, the tower raging 64m high, equipped with a Siemens Gamesa 2.3MW generator. Since 2019 the turbine has been owned and operated by Unitech Offshore, and with 15 years of total operation in the North Sea we have learned a thing or two about operations and maintenance of FOWT that can be shared with the industry. Design life was originally relatively short, and has now been prolonged several times in order to optimize the economy of the project, but also learn more about the different components and how they behave over time. In order to make the FOWT industry economically viable and sustainable, we believe that life prolonging efforts for existing turbines will be more and more important in coming years. Zephyros 1 is now operating as a test-center for new technology and innovations together with the catapultcenter Sustainable Energy, as well as being a hub for the MET Centre.