Oslo [Norway], August 24: Norway's Crown Prince Haakon on Wednesday opened the world's largest floating offshore wind farm on the Gullfaks C oil rig in the North Sea.
Haakon gave the symbolic go-ahead for the facility called Hywind Tampen by connecting two cables.
The field located some 140km (87 miles) offshore began production at the end of last year, but was officially inaugurated Wednesday.
The plant will supply electricity to five oil and gas platforms in the North Sea in order to reduce their CO2 emissions.
According to the oil and gas company Equinor, which headed the project, this is expected to save 200,000 tonnes of CO2 annually.
"Today we are making history," Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said during the opening, the NTB news agency reported.
While the project is expensive, someone needed to lead the way with the technology, the prime minister added.
"By connecting these lines here, we are connecting to the future," Haakon said.
Floating wind turbines are not firmly fixed to the seabed. The turbines are instead mounted on floating concrete structures with a joint anchoring system.
Hywind Tampen is the first facility of its kind in Norway. It consists of 11 floating turbines.
The wind farm cost 7.4bn crowns ($694mn) and first produced electricity in November 2022.
The project is owned by Norway's state-owned oil groups Equinor and Petoro, Austria's OMV, the Norwegian subsidiary of Italy's Eni dubbed Var Energi, Germany's Wintershall DEA and Japan's Inpex.
With a planned total capacity of 88 megawatts, it is expected to cover approximately one-third of the electricity needs of the Snorre A and B and Gullfaks A, B and C oil and gas platforms.
Source: Qatar Tribune