Floating offshore windfarms are a simple concept, but one with enormous potential for clean energy production globally.
They enable turbines to be located into deeper waters, where more space is available and winds are stronger and more reliable. But how many floating offshore windfarms are already operating around the world?
By Matthew Barnott – Engineer at Flotation Energy
In the last seven years since Hywind Scotland was commissioned off the Scottish coast near Peterhead, becoming the world’s first floating offshore windfarm, floating offshore wind has seized the imagination of the renewable energy world. Governments internationally are looking to floating technology to help meet net-zero targets and the pipeline of floating offshore windfarms in planning is increasing rapidly. There are however, still only five floating offshore windfarms in the world that are operational with three or more turbines, alongside a handful of single or dual turbine sites.
Flotation Energy’s founders were central to the development of Kincardine, still the world’s largest grid-connected floating offshore windfarm. The project helped to cement the UK’s status as a leader in floating offshore wind. Kincardine’s first 2 MW turbine started generating in 2018 and phase 2 of the project was completed in summer 2022, adding five 9.5 MW turbines. These remain the largest capacity turbines mounted on floating substructures.
List of global floating offshore windfarms, 2025
| Country | Project | No. of Turbines | Total Capacity (MW) |
| UK | Hywind Scotland Pilot Park | 5 | 30 |
| UK | Kincardine Offshore Windfarm | 5 | 48
|
| Portugal | WindFloat Atlantic | 3 | 25 |
| Norway | Hywind Tampen | 11 | 94.6 |
| France | Provence Grand Large | 3 | 24 |
| Totals | 27 | 221.6 MW | |
Connected to the grid by the end of 2019 and commissioned in 2020, WindFloat Atlantic is located off the coast of Viana do Castelo, Portugal, and is a pioneering project supplying the Portuguese electricity grid.
In 2022, Hywind Tampen began supplying electricity to oil and gas fields Snorre and Gullfaks in the Norwegian North Sea – this was was the world’s first floating wind farm built specifically to power offshore oil and gas installations.
In 2024, the Provence Grand Large project, a 25 MW floating offshore wind farm generated first power. The project was the first of its kind in France and the wider Mediterranean, with generation capacity fully commissioned in 2025.
80% of the world’s offshore wind resource potential lies in waters deeper than 60m. For many countries, the technical potential for floating offshore wind dwarfs that of fixed-bottom turbines. If offshore wind is to ramp up its contribution to net zero, rapid deployment of floating wind farms will be needed.
Global Wind Energy Council
The list of pioneering projects out in the water and operational are of course to be celebrated, but their scale is modest in comparison to the huge potential of floating offshore wind around the world. There is currently less than 300 MW of installed floating offshore wind capacity in the world – with 78 MW in the UK. The joint Government-Industry Floating Offshore Wind Taskforce estimates that by 2050 this will rise to up to 40 GW of floating offshore windfarms in the UK alone, producing 175 terawatt hours per year. This would equate to the equivalent of 60% of the UK’s total electricity generation at 2023 levels.
Working with our joint venture partners, Flotation Energy is developing three floating projects in UK waters with a total capacity of over 2GW:
(up to 560MW)
(up to 1,350MW)
(up to 100MW)
Green Volt, being developed with Vårgrønn, 75km off the Aberdeenshire coast, will be Europe’s first commercial-scale floating offshore windfarm. It is the first project of this scale in the UK to successfully secure a grid connection, full planning consent and a Contract for Difference (CfD) from the UK government.
At up to 560MW, Green Volt will more than triple the world’s installed capacity of floating offshore wind and pave the way for delivering subsequent commercial scale floating wind projects globally.
Green Volt will shortly be followed by the White Cross Offshore Windfarm, being developed in a joint venture with Grupo Cobra, which is a test and demonstration project in the Celtic Sea with a capacity of up to 100MW.
Next, our Cenos Offshore Windfarm – also being developed with our partners Vårgrønn – is set to be one of the world’s largest floating wind farms and will build on the lessons learned on Green Volt and White Cross.
The UK is already a global leader in the offshore wind industry, and floating offshore wind is the future of that industry. These trailblazing projects will boost the floating offshore wind supply chain, stimulate investment and help the UK achieve its mission of becoming a clean energy superpower.
