Insights from Hywind Tampen’s pre-installation monitoring

Published
October 28, 2025
Reading time
5 minutes

What does world-class environmental monitoring look like in floating wind? Hywind Tampen can show how integrated, transparent data is reshaping offshore environmental practice.

A floating milestone with ecological implications

Hywind Tampen is the world’s largest floating offshore wind farm, built to supply power to oil and gas platforms in the North Sea.

Beyond its engineering significance, it has become a test bed for biodiversity-monitoring innovation.

From bird behaviour to fish communities, the project demonstrates how robust pre-installation monitoring can shape better ecological and operational outcomes.

Why pre-installation monitoring mattered

Floating wind introduces new biodiversity questions. Unlike fixed-bottom turbines, floating platforms operate in deeper waters and novel ecological contexts.

For Hywind Tampen, regulators required strong evidence that the project would not significantly affect protected species in the North Sea.

That meant building environmental baselines before construction — capturing seabird activity, pelagic ecosystems, and marine noise — while ensuring that datasets were transparent and scientifically defensible.

What monitoring revealed

Hywind Tampen’s pre-installation monitoring used multiple complementary tools, each contributing unique ecological insight:

AI-enabled CCTV bird monitoring (Equinor / Spoor, 2023)
High-resolution cameras on floating platforms recorded seabird presence and behaviour in real time. The pilot study demonstrated how automated detection can quantify flight activity and flux rates while reporting uncertainty and bias openly.
Glider biomass monitoring (Tethys, 2024)
Autonomous ocean gliders tracked zooplankton and fish biomass upstream and downstream of the Hywind Tampen site. The results indicated no large-scale disruption to pelagic ecosystems during the monitored period, providing an important baseline for future floating wind assessments.
eDNA surveys (Equinor, 2024)
Water-sample metabarcoding provided a snapshot of fish communities across sites, offering species-level insights where visual methods were limited.
Noise impact assessment (Tethys, 2020)
Modelled and measured thresholds for marine mammals informed turbine-operation protocols.
Supplementary radar detection
Radar data were used alongside AI monitoring to validate detection range and enrich seabird movement analysis, serving as a complementary input rather than a primary dataset.

Together, these approaches produced a layered baseline across species groups, methods, and timescales.

Practical insights from Hywind Tampen

1. Multi-technology monitoring is essential

No single method captures the full ecological picture. Hywind Tampen demonstrates the value of combining video, acoustic, molecular, and glider-based systems to reduce uncertainty and strengthen confidence.

2. Transparency builds trust

Equinor published bird-monitoring datasets through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), enabling external review and reuse. This transparency increases regulatory confidence and fosters scientific collaboration.

3. Baselines shape operations

Pre-installation datasets supported more than permit applications. They established benchmarks for shutdown-on-demand protocols, habitat management, and long-term ecological governance.

4. Floating wind needs tailored approaches

Deeper waters and novel technology bring distinct ecological challenges. Monitoring design cannot simply replicate fixed-bottom projects — it must adapt to local and technological contexts.

From project lessons to industry standards

Hywind Tampen shows that pre-installation monitoring is not a formality. Done well, it forms the foundation of permitting success, stakeholder trust, and adaptive operations.

Key takeaways:

Build monitoring portfolios, not single-method surveys.
Be transparent with data and methodology.
Treat ecological baselines as strategic assets, not just compliance obligations.

As floating wind scales worldwide, these lessons can guide the next generation of industry standards. Projects that invest early in high-resolution, multi-modal monitoring will be best positioned to expand clean energy while protecting biodiversity.

📍 Explore Spoor’s project reports to see how AI-powered monitoring is helping developers establish strong ecological baselines across real-world wind farms.

Sources and further reading