offshoring

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory released images on Wednesday depicting offshore wind energy potential around the world.

Gathered from almost 10 years of satellite data, the wind maps can be used by offshore wind energy developers to measure which sites have the best resource.

The best sites, depicted in red, have a steady and high wind speed for most of the year. Offshore wind turbines have the advantage of not having wind blocked by buildings or land formations.

Wind energy could supply 10 percent to 15 percent of the world's electricity needs, said Paul Dimotakis, chief technologist at NASA'… Read more

Wind power's best days may be out at sea.

Energy company StatoilHydro on Thursday announced Hywind, a project to test a large-scale offshore wind turbine.

The 2.3-megawatt turbine, a Siemens machine that is 65 meters high, will sit atop a buoy tied down by three anchors.

The system can work in depths ranging from 120 meters to 700 meters, according to StatoilHydro. It will be tested, starting in 2009, off the coast of Norway.

Building offshore wind turbines is an idea that has been advocated for some time. One advantage is that they are, in theory, out of … Read more

Want some turbines to build a wind power park? Get in line.

High demand--coupled with the engineering challenges of building turbines that can extract hundreds of kilowatts or megawatts of power from the wind--has created a shortage. Wind park developers, thus, are being forced to jostle their plans and supply line relationships to keep projects on track.

If you order now, you might not get turbines until late 2009 or later.

"There has been a backlog for a significant period of time. The lead time is around a year to a year and a half," said Myke Clark, … Read more

DUBLIN, Ireland--It's easier here than in most industrialized nations to green the electrical grid.

Peak demand for electricity in the Republic of Ireland comes to about 5,000 megawatts, Graham Brennan, program manager for renewable-energy research and development at Sustainable Energy Ireland, the government's green-technology arm, said in an interview in SEI's Dublin offices. The peak occurred last December, at 4,907 megawatts.

Studies show that onshore and offshore wind turbines located in the republic could deliver approximately 5,000 megawatts of power over both parts of the island, he added. This figure takes into account only … Read more

The British government on Monday proposed the construction of up to 7,000 offshore wind turbines to accelerate the country's conversion to cleaner power.

The proposal, unveiled by U.K. business secretary John Hutton, is meant to help achieve the European Union's goal of producing 20 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, according to reports.

Britain will overtake Denmark next year as the country with the most offshore wind power, Hutton said at an energy conference in Berlin.

The country now gets about 2 percent of its energy from renewable sources. The plans call for … Read more

Sick of getting opinions about offshoring filtered through the media? Here's your chance to hear with your own ears some significant voices in the debate over shipping work abroad.

A Webcast is available of an offshore outsourcing discussion earlier this week involving John McCarthy, the Forrester Research analyst famous for predicting more than 3 million services jobs will head overseas, and Norm Matloff, a University of California, Davis professor and long-time advocate for software programmers. Rounding out the speakers were David Foote, president of compensation research Foote Partners, and Dean Lane, chief executive of software company Varitools.

The title … Read more