The world’s first floating offshore windfarm has been announced and will be using naval heavy plates produced by Luxembourg-based company ArcelorMittal.
The windfarm’s five floating structures will be located about 25 km off the coast of Scotland at Buchan Deep. Each structure will extend some 100m beneath the surface of the water and will be moored to the seabed. The structures will weigh some 3,500 tonnes and will stretch to 14.4m at their largest point.
“Several factors made ArcelorMittal the ideal supplier for this project: our proximity to the customer’s premises, our short delivery times, the quality of our steels, and our ability to react quickly to the unforeseen challenges that are possible with a project of this size and scale,” said Luis Rodríguez Hevia, of ArcelorMittal Asturias’ commercial department.
The metal is being produced in Gijón, Spain and, with the relocation of the metal for assembly already started in December 2015, it is calculated to be completed in May this year. Construction of the windfarm began in January 2016 and will require around 450,000 hours of work.
Photo by Ian Dick
