The coast of Scotland is set to host the world’s largest floating wind farm.
Statoil, the Norwegian energy company developing the farm, were granted a seabed lease on Monday by the Crown Estate.
The farm will be 15 miles off the east coast’s Peterhead and is expected to be generating electricity by the end of 2017.
The effort is part of a global race to develop floating wind turbines which can harvest the planet’s strongest winds.
Siting offshore turbines on concrete and steel foundations driven into the ocean floor incurs great costs at depths greater than about 40 metres, but this could be avoided by a floating fleet of turbines.
Another advantage is that being placed so far out to sea they do not disrupt the sea line for observers on shore.
About 40 projects around the globe are in development, although more than 90% of all offshore capacity is installed in northern Europe. The UK has the largest share, but Germany is catching up quickly while Japan, China and the US are all boosting development, particularly after the Fukushima disaster.
Only about 3% so far of all wind power comes from offshore, making free-floating turbines a promising element for renewable energy and one less likely than land based windmills to be opposed.
The base of each Hywind turbine is a floating steel tube containing ballast, which is anchored loosely to the sea bed.
Morton Eeks, from Hywind's developer Statoil, says one feature of the design is a positioning system: "You can remote control it to keep it on the site you want to get the best wind.”
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