First offshore wind turbine to be buoyed off Norway

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.

Click on the image to see a 3-meter-high prototype.

(Credit: StatoilHydro)

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 sight, allaying NIMBY (not in my backyard) sentiment.

But there are a number of technical challenges and the cost burden of building electricity transmission lines back to where it can be used.

So there is still a lot of research and development required before offshore turbines are deployed for commercial power generation.

"The wind turbines must work satisfactorily even when subjected to movements, and it must also be possible to carry out necessary maintenance to the highest of safety standards," said Alexandra Bech Gjørv, the head of new energy at StatoilHydro, in a statement.

[k2dave]

Can 2.3 megawatts really be produced from a single windturbine, that's 2,300,000 watts? which seems way too high. perhaps 2.3 kilowatts, or the megawatts represent a entire field of these floating turbines.

[k2dave]

Can 2.3 megawatts really be produced from a single windturbine, that's 2,300,000 watts? which seems way too high. perhaps 2.3 kilowatts, or the megawatts represent a entire field of these floating turbines.

[texaslabrat]

@k2dave:
Yes, 2.3MW is very much a feasible power rating. Remember...these things are 65m high...approximately 200 feet. That's a big windmill ;) I'll spare you the mathematical mumbo jumbo, but suffice it to say this is doable from an energy transfer point of view. Whether they can actually build the things and have them survive long-term in the open ocean is another story.

[rsbarber]

So, why not combine this with the technology that employs buoys to generate energy via wave motion?

[supoman]

Why not create a wave motion engine and a wave motion gun like Star Blazers?.....Just kidding. This is cools stuff. It does irk me a little to see how far behind the curve we are in the states. Still fighting to drill oil in Alaska........with all the tech we have.... We have a enormous fusion reactor in the sky pumping out tremendous energy and we can't harness it? 200 years from now people will look back and think "What a bunch of idiots!!!"

[marcusmaedl]

Yes, 2.3 MW per turbine is realistic (just not at a height of 100feet - that must be meters). Wind mills are quiet efficient harvesters of secondary solar energy (the sun heating up land masses creating pressure differences to cause wind...). Wind will be an important factor in renewable energy for a long time. And yes, we are a bunch of idiots for not being able to store the energy the sun throws at us. The harvesting in photovoltaics is well on its way with modern solar cells reaching 20% and more conversion efficiency and cost coming down fast due to economy of scale effects in production volume increases. The problem is the storage. As soon as we can elegantly (meaning efficiently and inexpensively) store the energy, we have arrived. Combine generation technology with a smart grid and useful storage and then spend 500 billions a year to further develop and deploy it, as opposed to designing completely useless weapon programs aimed at killing some unknown enemy (Al Qaeda can be fought with WW2 weapons) and we will morph into more civilized beings that have then earned the right to call this generation a bunch of idiots.....

[SJHunter]

Shoot, let's go full boat and coat the blades with PVs, too.

[JCPayne]

Barbados in the Caribbean is doing this I think next year....

Barbados Light and Power Company (BL&P Co.)
http://www.blpc.com.bb/wattsnew.cfm?ID=7

[sgornick]

I've been wondering why the Wave Dragon ( www.wavedragon.net ) hasn't been looked at with greater interest. It uses wave power, but on a small scale. Waves roll up a ramp and fall down the center, powering the turbine generators.

Maybe few are aware of it because it isn't a mega-project and wouldn't be that controversial to deploy. But Denmark stopped funding it ... so now they are moving to the U.K.

I would love to see a cost comparison between the different technologies. Putting windmills in the ocean -- maybe it will work, but if you are considering extracting power from the ocean, to me it seems the best source for that power is from the water itself (waves, or currents).

[misfire99]

This will increase global warming!!! One of the ways the earth says cool is because wind blows over the water cooling the air. You use this same principle when you have a swamp cooler in your house that blows air through wet excelsior. If we take the energy out of the air it will not bow over the water as much. I suspect this will even be a greater source of global warming then pollution.. And the current theories about pollution and global warming are very suspect. But they are treated as gospel an anybody that questions them are forcibly silenced. And for those that didn't know humans have polluted the earth so much that the temperature of Jupiter has gone up one degree in the past year. How about another theory, The sun is getting hotter, our magnetic field is weakening ( it has by over a third) and the burning of wood and coal in China and India are more of a problem then fossil fuel use in the first world ( having lived in China I have no problem believing this.) But the scientist that proposed this theory has been silenced so you didn't here about it, unless you look for it. He called it the Asian Brown Cloud.

The best way to get energy out of the ocean is to use the temperature differential between deep ocean water and the surface. ( http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.06/craven.html )

[marcusmaedl]

sounds absurd but I shall be careful to judge.
Just the orders of magnitude between the energy we are taking out and the total amount of wind energy there is. Sounds like one were to suggest to stop eating beans because the farts increase global warming (methane)....

Anyway, try to do some research and look at the numbers. I would love to but can't afford the time....

[pakua]

This other photo doesn't seem ugly to me, on the contrary:

http://d.yimg.com/i/ng/ne/maxisciences/20090920/18/3359568432-la-norvege-inaugure-la-premiere-eolienne-flottante-grande-echelle.jpg?x=231&y=345&q=75&sig=RuhOjoDSql54AoB62hnxag--

Besides that, maybe such wind farms could be helpful if also used to signal ship routes and dangerous sea pitfalls like submerged reefs, working as floating lighthouses.

We do urgently need cleaner energy sources, such wind mills seem to be a very important contribution. We all also need to do some homework and save wherever we can.