SeaTwirl, Kontiki Winds to Explore Powering Oil & Gas Assets with Floating Wind - Offshore WIND
SeaTwirl, Kontiki Winds to Explore Powering Oil & Gas Assets with Floating Wind | Offshore Wind
SeaTwirl, Kontiki Winds to Explore Powering Oil & Gas Assets with Floating Wind
The Sweden-headquartered SeaTwirl has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Kontiki Winds to identify and discuss the opportunities to electrify oil and gas assets and other offshore applications, with the use of SeaTwirl’s floating wind turbines.
Under the MoU, the two companies will explore new opportunities in the market to implement offshore wind into new and existing oil and gas assets and microgrid applications such as the powering of fish farms, desalination plants and/or other small-scale applications that currently are based on fossil fuel electricity generation.
“With SeaTwirl we have found a field tested solution for Offshore Wind Generation that fills a gap in the current market offering. We believe decentralised, easily installed and locally produced power will play a key role in the future energy mix and can’t wait to start exploring this further with SeaTwirl”, said Eyvin Svendsen, VP Electrification Kontiki Winds.
At the beginning of last year, SeaTwirl was granted a five-year concession by Norwegian Waterways and Energy Directorate to install its 1 MW S2x vertical-shafted turbine with associated anchors and a cable for power transmission in Boknafjorden, northeast of Lauplandsholmen.
SeaTwirl’s technology incorporates a floating vertical axis wind turbine (VAWTT) with a tower placed on an underwater structure, which consists of a buoyancy component and a keel at its lowest point.
The turbine has a height 55 metres above the water surface, with 80 metres of the platform being below sea surface.
The wind turbine in Norway is planned to be connected to an existing transformer station on land that has enough capacity to receive electricity produced by S2x.
When it comes to Kontiki Winds, the Havfram-owned company signed another MoU at the beginning of this year with Oceaneering to jointly pursue the application of floating offshore wind for remote microgrid renewable power generation, with a particular focus on the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil, and Northern Europe.
For Havfram, the parent company of Kontiki Winds, this is one of the key areas since the company changed its name from Ocean Installer in 2020 as part of its commitment to offshore wind.
Last year, Havfram revealed its intention to become one of the future leaders in the electrification market for oil and gas production assets through offshore wind developments. The company said it had identified oil and gas electrification as one of the next big Power-to-X offshore wind markets and that it was developing a low-cost offshore wind solution specifically designed for electrifying offshore oil and gas facilities.
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Over the next decade, U.S. offshore wind power is expected to grow from a single 30-megawatt wind farm off Rhode Island to more than 2,000 MW of capacity along the Atlantic Seaboard. There are contracts for wind power off the coasts of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Virginia.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated the United States has over 4,000 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind potential, enough to power the country four times over.
The growth in part being spurred by state solicitations, including in New York, where then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) set a commitment of 9,000 MW of offshore wind by 2035, and in Connecticut, where in June 2021, Gov. Ned Lamont (D) signed legislation authorizing the construction of 2,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030.
The offshore development is also being driven by an investment tax credit set to end in December 2019 and is equal to 12 percent of expenditures. U.S. Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Tom Carper (D-Del.) have introduced a bill to extend the tax credit for up to eight years.
The Interior Department has held eight competitive lease sales that resulted in 15 offshore wind leases over 1.7 million acres that has the potential for 21 GW of capacity. In February 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management completed a bidding process that realized $4.37 billion for 488,000 acres across six lease areas in federal waters off New York and New Jersey.
Projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, off California and Hawaii, and for the Great Lakes.