Odfjell Oceanwind has been awarded a pre-project grant from Enova, Norway’s fund for climate and energy technologies, to mature its first commercial contracts for Mobile Offshore Wind Units (MOWUs) and WindGrid.
These will be used for the electrification of oil and gas installations.
The grant is awarded under Enova’s full scale innovative energy and climate technology programme.
Potential funding of Nkr10m (€0.96m) will be used to part finance the building of Odfjell Oceanwind’s first MOWS and for integrating these to oil and gas installations on the Norwegian continental shelf.
The MOWUs are based on Siemens Gamesa’s 11MW offshore wind turbine generator and Odfjell Oceanwind’s WindGrid hybrid system for integrating the MOWUs into the host platforms power system.
The WindGrid will allow gas turbines on the host platform to be stopped in periods with wind power production, thus enabling 60-70% reduction of CO2-emissions on the oil and gas platform in the North Sea.
The grant is and will fund part of the engineering and planning activities in second half of 2021 providing a sound foundation for an investment decision.
The main project aims at connecting the first MOWUs to oil and gas installations in 2024.
Odfjell Oceanwind chief executive Per Lund said: “This award marks another milestone on our roadmap towards commercial floating wind power, and will be an important enabler for us and our customers to progress the first MOWU contracts for oil and gas installations on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.
“Our customers have high ambitions for reducing carbon footprint from their activities and our solutions offer an attractive alternative to expensive and controversial electrification by use of shore power cables.”
Enova marketing manager Oskar Gärdemann said: “In the transition to a low-emission society, we need to develop technologies that contributes to increased production of renewable energy.
“There are still a number of technological challenges associated with floating offshore wind, and for Enova it is important to support studies to form a good basis for decision-making so that Odfjell Oceanwind can test and further develop technologies for floating offshore wind.”