Metocean Services International has deployed a current profile mooring in 107m water depth about 25km off the coast of Peterhead, Scotland, to support Statoil's Hywind Scotland Pilot Park development.

The measurement program is expected to last a year and the mooring will initially be serviced in March to provide preliminary data for engineering design.

Although current profile measurements are relatively straightforward in this water depth, the challenge on this project is to design a system to enable the recovery of the anchor weights. This is to meet the requirements of environmental legislation.

MSI's project management team designed a mooring configuration using Sonardyne acoustic releases to recover the main instrumentation mooring, and a separate acoustic release and rope canister system to recover the anchor components.

The mooring was deployed in November from the vessel C-Salvor.

The wind farm industry is moving offshore to take advantage of better wind conditions and reduced conflict when applying for acreage.

Hywind is a floating wind turbine that consists of a wind turbine placed atop a ballasted steel cylinder that is fastened to the seabed by three mooring lines.

It was developed by Statoil by combining technology from the wind industry with technologies from the oil and gas industry and drawing on its longstanding offshore experience.

This led to Statoil installing the world's first full scale floating wind turbine off the island of Karmoy, north of Stavanger, Norway.

After two year's testing, it reported the concept was verified and that performance was beyond expectations.

Statoil also said it believed that with few operational challenges, excellent production output and well-functioning technical systems the Hywind concept could revolutionise the future of offshore wind farms by taking them into deeper water.

The Hywind Scotland Pilot Park is the next phase of Statoil's development of this system.