Equinor, RWE Renewables and Hydro REIN have signed a collaboration agreement for offshore wind in Norway, the companies said May 26.
The partners are to submit an application to the Norwegian authorities to develop a large-scale bottom-fixed offshore wind farm in the Sorlige Nordsjo II area.
"The North Sea has among the world's best wind resources," Equinor's head of new energy solutions Pal Eitrheim said.
Norway in 2020 opened two areas for offshore wind development with up to 4.5 GW of combined capacity.
The ministry is currently working on the licensing process.
The 2,596 sq km Sorlige Nordsjo II area borders the Danish sector in Norway's Southern North Sea.
The area is ideally located for supply of electricity to Europe, the partners said, with strong wind resource and water depths of between 53 and 70 meters.
Water depths in Norway's second area, Utsira Nord (1,010 sq km) offshore Stavanger, make it suited only to floating wind technology.
Equinor and RWE jointly developed the 385 MW Arkona project in Germany's section of the Baltic Sea, commissioned in 2019.
Aluminum smelter Hydro, meanwhile, is one of the world's largest corporate buyers of renewable power.
Its participation in the partnership will be organized through newly established renewables unit Hydro REIN, it said.
The area has a potential to deliver a significant amount of renewable energy to countries aiming to transform their energy mix, following the EU's and the UK's stated ambitions for 300 GW and 100 GW respectively of offshore wind capacity by 2050 to reach their net zero ambitions, it said.Hydro-rich Norway has been slow in developing offshore wind.
Equinor has focused on floating wind turbine technology, operating the world's largest such project in Scotland and developing the 88 MW Hywind Tampen project to supply electricity to oil and gas platforms on the Norwegian Continental Shelf.
