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.
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.
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin.





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.
Barbados Light and Power Company (BL&P Co.)
http://www.blpc.com.bb/wattsnew.cfm?ID=7
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).
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by misfire99
July 10, 2008 1:54 PM PDT
- 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.
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by marcusmaedl
June 12, 2009 11:26 AM PDT
- sounds absurd but I shall be careful to judge.
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(11 Comments)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 )
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....