Out to Sea: On a Floating Wind Farm

Stanley Reed📍Reporting from the North Sea

The photographer Andrew Testa and I recently visited a floating wind farm off a fishing port in northeast Scotland. Floating turbines are a new frontier in the fast-growing offshore wind industry.

Here’s what we saw →

Out to Sea: On a Floating Wind Farm

Stanley Reed📍Reporting from the North Sea

Our boat passed under a drawbridge that controls the entrance to Peterhead harbor, where seals beg for fish.

About an hour from land, the turbines emerged from the low cloud. They are in about 300 feet of water.

Out to Sea: On a Floating Wind Farm

Stanley Reed📍Reporting from the North Sea

Even up close, it is not easy to appreciate how enormous these machines are. The towers, anchored with cables, are more than 300 feet high. With a 500-foot rotor diameter the blades seem to almost touch the water.

Out to Sea: On a Floating Wind Farm

Stanley Reed📍Reporting from the North Sea

Ben Lawson, the operations and maintenance manager for the wind farm, known as Hywind Scotland, says floating brings big advantages. Further offshore, the wind is not only stronger, but more consistent.

Out to Sea: On a Floating Wind Farm

Stanley Reed📍Reporting from the North Sea

Each hour the blades are turning, adding electricity to the power grid, they are helping Equinor, a Norwegian company, and its partner, Masdar, an Abu Dhabi renewable energy company, recover the $230 million they invested in the wind farm.

Out to Sea: On a Floating Wind Farm

Stanley Reed📍Reporting from the North Sea

The main clue that these turbines float is that they tilt slightly away from the wind. Equinor has figured out that this position is optimal for capturing the sea breeze.

Out to Sea: On a Floating Wind Farm

Stanley Reed📍Reporting from the North Sea

Floaters have other advantages. They can be installed in water deeper than the roughly 200-foot mark where fixed turbines make economic sense. That opens up markets, including California, Japan and South Korea.

Out to Sea: On a Floating Wind Farm

Stanley Reed📍Reporting from the North Sea

Andy Buchanan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Offshore oil and gas platforms have helped sustain northeast Scotland for decades. But those industries are now in decline and Scotland hopes it is seeing the dawn of another long-lived offshore industry.

Read more about Europe’s investment in wind and alternative energy.