Offshore staff
STAVANGER, Norway – Equinor has designed a new floating wind concept, the Wind Semi, which it claims is suited to industrial standardization.
Its aims to deploy the new semisubmersible wind turbine foundation design if successful in its bid for Scotland’s ScotWind leasing process. The planned 1-GW project would have an output over 30 times greater than the company’s first floating offshore wind development, the 30-MW Hywind Scotland in the North Sea, which started operating in 2017.
Wind Semi is said to allow for fabrication and assembly based on local supply chain capabilities.
Various features are said to be particularly well suited to harsh water environments.
These include increased reliability: Wind Semi, which features a passive ballast system, is said to have a simple substructure design that lessens the risk of system failure and the amount of maintenance required.
Its flat plate design dispenses with bracings, heave plates, and complicated nodes that are prone to fatigue cracking.
And with a harbour draught of less than 10 m (33 ft), the turbine integration can be assembled at most industrialized ports. The flat plate design also allows the substructure to be constructed in blocks either locally and/or shipped from other locations.
11/01/2021
