February 23 - Statoil has unveiled its 75 m long turbine blades for its floating offshore wind farm, the Hywind Scotland Pilotpark, at its facilities in Stord, Norway.
The blades, which weigh 25 tons (22.67 tonnes) each, will be installed by the NorSea Group (NSG) which signed a contract with Statoil in February 2016 concerning the preparation and adaptation of NSG's Stord base as the assembly base for the five wind turbines.
Once fully assembled, each turbine will be 253 m tall and have a total weight of 12,000 tons (10,886 tonnes).
Leif Delp, Hywind project director at Statoil, said: "They are going to produce significantly more power than previous test turbines. They are going to be taller and have a larger substructure, but at a lower manufacturing cost. The cost per megawatt will go down 60-70 percent."
Once the five wind turbines have been assembled by NSG in Norway, they will be towed across the North Sea to the UK, where the turbines will produce 6 MW each.
The NorSea group, a provider of base services and logistics solutions to the Norwegian oil and gas industry, is partially owned by the Wilhelmsen Group.
A video of the arrival of the blades can be viewed here.
