World’s largest floating wind farm completed in Scotland

The 48MW Kincardine Offshore Wind farm has been completed off the coast of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and classed by the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) as the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm.

ABS announced on Monday that the 48MW Kincardine Offshore Wind farm had been completed and subsequently classed by the Bureau as “the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm”.

Located approximately 15-kilometres off the southeast coast of Aberdeenshire, in the north-east of Scotland, in water depths ranging between 60-metres and 80-metres, the Kincardine Offshore Wind farm consists of five 9.5MW turbines as well as a smaller 2MW turbine.

The first turbine at the Kincardine Offshore Wind Farm, a 2MW Vestas turbine, was installed all the way back in October of 2018. Now operational, the Kincardine Offshore Wind farm is expected to generate up to 218GWh worth of electricity each year – enough to power the equivalent of approximately 55,000 Scottish households.

The project was developed by Kincardine Offshore Wind developer, a subsidiary of Pilot Offshore Renewables, while the engineering, design, supply, construction, and commissioning of the Kincardine floating wind farm was undertaken by Cobra Wind, a subsidiary of ACS Group. Neither company had anything to say at the conclusion of construction.

The American Bureau of Shipping, which provided classification services for the project, and whose Guide for Building and Classing Floating Offshore Wind Turbines covers all phases of the project including design, fabrication, transport, and service inspections, were the only ones to comment on the successful completion of construction and start of operation.

“ABS is the global leader in the Classification of floating offshore wind, with our Guide used for more than 80MW of floating turbines now installed,” said Matthew Tremblay, ABS Senior Vice President, Global Offshore.

“As the leading Classification organization for the offshore industry since the very first offshore installations, we can use this extensive experience to support the safe development of the floating offshore wind industry.

This exciting project demonstrates the potential of floating turbines and we are confident they will have an increasingly prominent role to play in the development of sustainable energy all over the world.”