The world's first offshore wind farm to directly supply oil and gas platforms will be completed in Norway. The Norwegian company Equinor (formerly Norwegian Petroleum) plans to build a floating offshore wind farm to supply power directly to five offshore oil and gas platforms in the nearby Gullfaks and Snorre regions.
The offshore wind farm that directly supplies power to the platform is the Hywind offshore wind farm (small reminder: it is not the world's first offshore wind farm Hywind Scotland Pilot Park), the wind farm will install 11 8MW offshore wind turbines with a total installed capacity of 88MW. The project follows the Equinor floating offshore wind power design. According to the assessment, the project's power generation capacity can meet 35% of the annual electricity consumption of five offshore platforms (Snorre A, B, Gullfaks A, B, C), and it is expected to reduce CO2 emissions by no less than 200,000 tons per year, about 100,000. The annual emissions of a car.
It is estimated that the total investment of the project is 5 billion Norwegian kroner (about 514 million euros), and the unit cost is about 5.84 euros/W. This price is higher than the current average cost of offshore wind power. Equinor said it will further study to reduce project costs. The NOx Fund will provide 566 million Norwegian kroner funding for the project. In addition, the Norwegian government funds the project through the policy and state-owned company ENOVA to encourage innovative integration of offshore wind power and the oil and gas industry. The Snorre and Gullfaks platforms have applied to ENOVA for a full range of innovative energy and climate response plans. Currently, Snorre and Gullfaks oil and gas platforms are working on further projects and expect to complete investment decisions in 2019.
Enova is a Norwegian state-owned company whose mission is to support innovative technologies to address energy, climate change issues and address power security issues. According to statistics, from 2012 to 2017, the company has supported 5,243 projects and provided a total of about 12.1 billion Danish kroner. The state's encouragement and support for innovation is the driving force for the continuous development of various industries.
