200 MW Floating Wind Farm in South Korea Moves Forward

A 200 MW floating wind project in South Korea, developed by Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC), Korea East-West Power (EWP), and Equinor completed the preliminary feasibility study on 4 May.

With the completion of the study, conducted by the Korea Development Institute (KDI), the project – called Donghae 1 – will now gain momentum to move forward to realisation, according to KNOC.

KNOC said that now, with this step completed, it planned to respond to the government’s Green Deal policy by pursuing the realisation of the Donghae 1 floating offshore wind project.

Earlier information on the project said that, pending results of the feasibility study, the consortium would start constructing the floating wind farm in 2022, with possible power production start-up in 2024.

The 200 MW floating wind farm will be located close to the KNOC-operated Donghae natural gas field off the coast of Ulsan, which the feasibility study also included.

The developers deployed a floating LiDAR at the project site in 2018. Once operational, the Donghae 1 project will become the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm, more than twice the size of Equinor’s Hywind Tampen in Norway.

Equinor and KNOC signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly explore the opportunities of developing commercial floating offshore wind in South Korea in February 2019. Shortly after, the Norwegian company entered into an agreement with the City of Ulsan to cooperate on the development of floating wind projects.

In 2020, Equinor announced it had deployed two floating LiDARs to conduct wind measurements and investigate the possibility of constructing an 800 MW floating offshore wind project in the East Sea off the coast of Ulsan.