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Floating Wind Turbines

Posted by kdawson on from the out-of-sight-out-of-bird-migration-paths dept.

The Great Pulgoso sends us word that Norwegian energy group Norsk Hydro has signed an agreement with Siemens to develop floating wind turbines. The companies agreed on a schedule that would see a prototype in the North Sea by 2009 and a working wind farm using 5-megawatt generators by 2013. (Norsk Hydro unveiled the design in 2005.) Inhabitat.com has taken the giant illustrations from the Norsk Hydro site and reproduced them at a reasonable size. The design features a steel tube 200 meters long. It extends 80 meters above the sea surface and has three 60-meter blades. The whole thing is anchored to the sea floor by three tethers. The developers expect to be able to install the turbines in waters up to 700 meters deep.

3 of 194 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wildlife? by Original+Replica · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Destroying habitats on the ocean floor and having birds fly into it won't go over well for the environmentalists I imagine.

    The whole "floating" thing is trying to solve that. By floating they can be located farther offshore, outside of migation patterns and coastal wildlife habitats. Sure they might need to make some sort of passive sonar reflectors to keep whales from hitting them, but being able to be in 500m water will also put them well out of sight of land, another NIMBY adoption problem.

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  2. Property values by jesterzog · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I haven't RTFA yet, but I thought the reason they didn't have many wind turbines in the ocean was because of the wildlife issues associated with it.

    I can't comment about other parts of the world, but in New Zealand the main resistance to wind farms is that nobody wants them in their back yard. They're big, ugly, and noisy, they tend to restrict public access to the surrounding land, and they cause the all-important property values of private individuals to plummet. Lately we've seen several local large wind farm projects either heavily toned down, or completely scuttled. Each has been worth between hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, but small groups of locals have put a lot of effort into blocking them.

    Even though I have mixed feelings, I do actually sympathise with many of the complaints. Society (here at least) has been built to encourage people to value personal property and what they own, and property ownership is a very traditional and encouraged way for people to invest for their future. People here have their retirement funds in their property, and suddenly seeing that value plummet by 50% or more because the local council or government decides that it might allow a wind farm nearby can be quite devestating. 20 years ago, nobody would have guessed that there would be an incentive to build giant noisy ugly structures all over the countryside, and there's only so much forward thinking that can be done.

    Even if it's kind of silly and inefficient, putting wind farms out at sea conveniently places them in a location which isn't the back yard of anyone likely to complain.

  3. Re:Wildlife? by mdsolar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I was gillnetting for salmon in Puget Sound years ago. The net was monofilament and meshed for sockeye. At night, a grey whale swam up then down the whole half mile length of net. They know what is in the water.

    On birds, the very large wind turbines turn quite slowly and this has proved much better for birds since thy fly faster than the blades move.
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