The Green Volt Floating Offshore Wind Farm is an up to 560MW renewable project planned to be developed in the Scottish North Sea.
In November 2023, Flotation Energy and Vårgrønn, a joint venture between Plenitude (Eni) and HitecVision, signed exclusivity agreements for two floating offshore wind developments with a combined capacity of 1.9GW under Crown Estate Scotland’s Innovation and Targeted Oil and Gas (INTOG) leasing round.
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The Green Volt Project is one of the two developments, the other being the Cenos Floating Offshore Wind Farm.
Subject to meeting key funding and investment milestones, the Final Investment Decision on Green Volt is expected at the end of 2024. The wind farm is expected to commence operations in 2027.
The project will support the decarbonisation of participating offshore oil and gas installations in the North Sea via electrification, while the excess renewable power will be fed into the UK Grid. It will also help Scotland to reach its 2045 Net Zero target.
Green Volt will supply around 1.5TWh of renewable electricity to the UK Grid per year and offset 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually. It will also contribute £2.5bn of gross value added (GVA) to the economy over its operational life.
In August 2023, Flotation Energy and Vårgrønn submitted an onshore planning application to Aberdeenshire Council for the onshore infrastructure of the wind farm.
Green Volt Location Details
The Green Volt Floating Offshore Wind Farm will be located around 20km from the Buzzard Platform Complex and 75km east of the Aberdeenshire coast on a brownfield site which hosted the decommissioned Ettrick and Blackbird oil fields within the UK continental shelf.
The wind project will cover an area of approximately 144km2 and the water depth in the region will be between 110m and 115m.
Green Volt Wind Farm Details
The Green Volt Floating Offshore Wind Farm is proposed to have up to 35 floating wind turbines. Each of the turbines will have a rated capacity between 10MW and 16MW with a minimum blade clearance of 22m above mean sea level. Wind turbines from Siemens Gamesa, GE, and Vestas are in consideration for the project.
The wind turbines will be installed on floating substructures moored through a catenary mooring system. The floating substructure will have a 12m elevation above the waterline and a maximum horizontal face length of 100m.
A maximum of six mooring lines will be used for each wind turbine generator to maintain it in place on the seabed.
A network of 66kV-rated inter-array cables with a total length of 87.5km will collect the wind power generated by the turbines and transmit it to up to two offshore substation platforms (OSPs).
The OSPs, supported on a jacket structure, will enable exporting the electricity to the Buzzard facility and to the offshore export cable that will connect to the Onshore Transmission Infrastructure (OnTI).
Power Transmission
The wind farm will be connected to the Buzzard Platform via a 15km-long cable from the OSP. The cable is expected to be between 11kV and 33kV voltage.
The offshore export cable will transport power to the landfall site located around 90km away along the Aberdeenshire shore.
A 30km-long onshore export cable will connect the offshore export cable and the onshore substation, where it will connect the OnTI to the UK grid.
Two areas are in consideration as landfall sites- Peterhead North and Peterhead South, with a substation at New Deer.
Contractors Involved
Royal HaskoningDHV, an engineering consultant firm, led the preparation of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) for Green Volt project.
First Marine Solutions conducted a quantitative analysis on different types of floating structures (semi-submersible, barge and tension-leg-platform structures) for the project.
