Consent has been granted for the UK's first and world's largest floating offshore wind farm, the Scottish Government has announced.

Statoil's Hywind Scotland development is to be installed off the coast of Peterhead after the application was granted a marine licence.

Features of the project include developing a pilot park of five floating six megawatt turbines approximately 25km off the coast of Peterhead.

The turbines will have a generating capacity of 135GWh of electricity each year.

It is understood the development could power up to 19,900 houses.

The turbines will be attached to the seabed by a three-point mooring spread and anchoring system.

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Connected by an inter-array of cables, an export cable will transport electricity from the pilot park to shore at Peterhead.

The Carbon Trust believe that floating wind concepts have the potential to reduce generating costs to below £100/MWh in commercial deployments, with the leading concepts such as Hywind, with even lower costs of £85-£95MWh.

Deputy First Minister John Swinney said: "Hywind is a hugely exciting project – in terms of electricity generation and technology innovation – and it's a real testament to our energy sector expertise and skilled workforce that Statoil chose Scotland for the world's largest floating wind farm."

Statoil's executive vice president for New Energy Solutions, Irene Rummelhoff, added: "Floating wind represents a new, significant and increasingly competitive renewable energy source.

"Statoil's objective with developing this pilot park is to demonstrate a commercial, utility-scale floating wind solution, to further increase the global market potential.

"We are proud to develop this unique project in Scotland, in a region that has optimal wind conditions, a strong supply chain within oil and gas and supportive public policies."

(LM/MH)