UK market

The first multi-turbine floating offshore wind farm is installed in the UK 30 km off the coast of Aberdeen. The project features five Siemens Gamesa 6 MW turbines mounted on spar floating substructures. Hywind Scotland follows on from a successful Norwegian demo project using a single 2.3 MW turbine which was installed off the coast of Norway in 2009.

Simply Blue Energy and Total (now TotalEnergies) secure a lease for their 96 MW Erebus project in the Celtic Sea from The Crown Estate.

The second multi-turbine floating offshore wind farm is installed in the UK. This project features five Vestas 9.5 MW turbines mounted on Principle Power semi-submersible floating substructures and becomes the largest floating offshore wind farm in the world.

The Crown Estate awards three more test and demonstration licences for three 100 MW projects in the Celtic Sea. These are: Cobra Group/Flotation Energy’s 100 MW Whitecross project, and Cierco’s Lyr 1 and 2 projects each rated at 100 MW.

Swedish floating developer Hexicon acquires the Wave Hub renewable energy test site in Cornwall, which has permits and grid connection in place to allow the installation of up to 40 MW of capacity. The site will feature the first deployment of the TwinWind floating substructure technology.

The UK Energy Ministry BEIS publishes its terms for Allocation Round 4, which is open to participation from floating offshore wind projects for the first time. Floating projects for delivery in 2025-2027 compete for supports against other eligible ‘less established’ technologies, but BEIS ringfences budget in this technology pot for first access to floating offshore wind projects. EDF’s 58.4 MW Blyth Phase 2 and Hexicon’s TwinWind demonstrator are expected to participate.

In January, 17 new projects were awarded leases through Crown Estate Scotland’s Scotwind process. 10 projects that will use floating technology secured 15 GW of the 24 GW total capacity awarded in the round. The sea bed leasing process raised a total of £700 million in option fee payments for the treasury.

In August an additional three floating projects totalling 2.8 GW were awarded off Shetland.

Equinor installs most of the 11 Siemens Gamesa 8 MW turbines on concrete spar buoys at its Gullfacks and Snorre oil field in Norway, marking the first time an offshore wind project has been connected to an oil and gas platform.

Following the success of the Scotwind process and Equinor’s progress with Hywind Tampen, Crown Estate Scotland opens its ‘Innovation and Targeted Oil and Gas’ (INTOG) leasing round. The round will allow developers to bring forward innovation projects less than 100 MW and projects capable of providing power to oil and gas platforms. The round may create 6.2 GW of new capacity across both its parts.

UK Energy Ministry BEIS is expected to open the ‘Floating Offshore Wind Manufacturing Investment Scheme’ (FLOWMIS) which will allocate around £160 million of funding towards the essential upgrade of port infrastructure required to enable the construction and marshalling of floating offshore wind technology in Scotland and Wales.

The auction concludes with no new offshore wind projects being awarded contracts.

The auction awarded 5 GW of offshore wind contracts, marking a significant rebound after the failure of the previous round. Green Volt, a 400 MW project being developed by a consortium between Flotation Energy and Vårgrønn, was the only floating project that was successful.