Strong Results for Hywind Tampen

Hywind Tampen delivered excellent results in the first months of 2025. And this has been achieved without any serious incidents.

"I am very pleased with the results from Hywind Tampen," says Production Manager Arild Lithun. "The results show that the wind conditions on the Norwegian continental shelf are excellent for power production, and that the Hywind concept works. Most importantly, we’ve managed to achieve these results without any serious incidents," he says.

Hywind Tampen consists of 11 turbines, with a total capacity of 94.6 MW, which produced 115.7 GWh in the first quarter of 2025. This helped cut a total of 60,600 tonnes of CO₂ emissions from the Snorre and Gullfaks fields, which the wind farm supplies with power. The quarterly results also include periods where the farm had to reduce output due to lower power demand on the platforms, making the performance even more impressive.

"We made excellent use of the strong winter winds. Now that summer is approaching, we expect somewhat calmer conditions and slightly lower production. But we’ll do everything we can to harness the wind as effectively as possible," says Lithun. Hywind Tampen, which was officially opened in August 2023, is the world’s largest floating wind farm and the first floating offshore wind farm to exclusively supply offshore oil and gas installations (Snorre and Gullfaks) with electricity. The wind farm is operated from Equinor’s office at Sandsli in Bergen. Here, the company has built a strong operations environment, working closely with its oil and gas operations.

"We gain significant synergies by working closely with our colleagues in oil and gas. We share a control room with Valemon, a supply vessel with Oseberg, emergency response with Gullfaks, and we use our base at Mongstad. This allows us to benefit from a highly skilled environment with extensive experience from the Norwegian continental shelf, while also reducing operating costs. Hywind Tampen is very important for building expertise in operating floating offshore wind," Lithun says.

Hywind Tampen was developed using a traditional wind turbine mounted on a concrete-based spar buoy known from the oil and gas industry. As a result, Norwegian suppliers contributed about 60 percent of the project during the development phase, and several of these suppliers have since delivered goods and services to other offshore wind projects around the world.

Hywind Tampen represents the third technological step in the Hywind concept, following Hywind Demo and Hywind Scotland, and has been an important step toward full-scale commercialization of floating offshore wind. Hywind Tampen is operated by Equinor on behalf of the license owners in Snorre and Gullfaks.