REM: First floating wind farm planned in Arctic, to be linked to oil platform

Plans for the first floating wind farm in the Arctic have been unveiled. The project would be in Norwegian waters and linked to an oil exploration platform.

The GoliatVIND wind park would be in the Barents Sea, and linked – for grid connection – to the floating production storage and offloading facility, the Goliat FPSO. The electricity will be transmitted to the Hammerfest region.

The clean-energy project is planned by Norway’s Odfjell Oceanwind, Source Galileo Norge and Vår Energi.

It would use Odfjell Oceanwind’s floating wind foundation, Deepsea Star. Source Galileo and Odfjell Oceanwind hope to install three to five floating wind units, each carrying a 15-MW wind turbine generator, with an earliest operational startup of 2026.   

The Goliat FPSO is owned by Vår Energi and Equinor, which have granted the GoliatVIND consortium rights to use the Goliat FPSO cable infrastructure to connect to the onshore grid.