The world’s largest floating offshore wind farm – Kincardine Offshore Windfarm – located about 9.3 miles offshore from Aberdeen, Scotland is now operational.  It has a nominal capacity of 50 MW and plans to generate up to 218 Gigawatt-hours of electricity each year, with its five 9.5 MW and one 2 MW Vestas wind turbines — enough to power the equivalent of about 55,000 Scottish households

Offshore floating wind farms work by connecting the buoyant substructure of the wind turbine to the seabed using mooring cables – borrowing technology from oil and gas rigs, utilizing tension leg platforms, spar buoys, and semisubmersible designs.  The advantage of placing them further out to sea is access to higher wind speeds and more consistent wind resources than onshore or closer to shore.  The newer technology has advanced in such a way that allows these wind turbines offshore to be less bulky and expensive.