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Project details
Project name:
Hywind Tampen
Client name:
Equinor
Location:
Norwegian Continental Shelf / Northern North Sea
Henrik Melsom
Senior Vice President of Norwegian operations
Key stats
World first:
World’s first floating wind farm to power offshore oil and gas platforms
CO2 offset:
200,000 tonnes per year
:
Making sustainable hydrocarbon production possible
Hydrocarbons will continue to be a major contributor to the energy mix for decades to come, but decarbonising oil and gas production will be a critical focus for energy companies seeking to ensure sustainable and responsible operations as we transition to net-zero.
With that, a key feature of the transition to a more equitable energy mix will be reducing the reliance on gas turbines that power offshore assets; particularly where they sit too far from shore to receive power from the grid.
Hywind Tampen, commissioned by Equinor and its partners, is the first offshore floating wind park to be designed solely for electrifying oil and gas infrastructure. Following hook-up to the Gullfaks and Snorre assets, the power will offset the reliance on the gas turbines and will therefore reduce CO2 emissions by around 200,000 tonnes per year, the equivalent of around 100,000 private cars.
Upgrading assets to be fit for the future
To make Gullfaks and Snorre able to receive power from Hywind Tampen, modifications and upgrades need to be made to the platforms themselves. The main modifications will be performed on the Gullfaks A and Snorre A platforms in those fields, which have been producing oil and gas since December 1986 and August 1992, respectively.
Wood is responsible for facilitating those platform upgrades and for making the integration of the wind park possible, as well as the onshore control room in Bergen, Norway.
Critically, it is essential that reliability of production is maintained to ensure operational continuity. Contingency planning is required in the case, for instance, that the wind park is shutdown due to extreme weather. Therefore, the existing power management system (PMS) functionality on Snorre and Gullfaks will be upgraded to receive power from the wind farm and electrical power system studies will ensure that the electrical grid on Snorre and Gullfaks can integrate the new power source from Hywind Tampen.
The most central function for the PMS is to ensure safe and predictable operation of the hybrid power system, ensuring it is capable of receiving both wind and gas turbine-generated power. The PMS will also ensure maximized use of wind power to minimise fuel gas usage and CO2 emissions.
About the contract
Wood was awarded a contract by Equinor in November 2019 to deliver the topsides modifications which includes performing the engineering, procurement, fabrication, and installation scopes on the Gullfaks A and Snorre A platforms.
Wood is responsible for performing the required modifications to the power management system on the Gullfaks and Snorre fields platforms including required modifications on various platforms where the main modifications are on Gullfaks A and Snorre A.
In addition, Wood is delivering the design of the employer SCADA system and telecommunication system for the wind turbines themselves and are purchasing and delivering the required equipment for these systems to be installed on the turbines. The employer SCADA system is the windfarm control system integrating the wind turbines to the platforms and the onshore control room.
