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Giant Floating Windmills To Launch Next Year

Posted by kdawson on from the we've-tried-earth-and-fire dept.

pacroon writes "StatoilHydro is building the world's first full-scale floating wind turbine, Hywind, and testing it over a two-year period offshore of Karmøy, Norway. The company is investing approximately $80 million. Planned startup is in the fall of 2009. The project combines existing technology in innovative ways. A 2.3-MW wind turbine is attached to the top of a so-called Spar-buoy, a solution familiar from production platforms and offshore loading buoys. A model 3 meters tall has already been tested successfully in a wave simulator. The goal of the pilot is to qualify the technology and reduce costs to a level that will mean that floating wind turbines can compete with other energy sources."

3 of 162 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Birds? by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Of course the windmills will produce traffic (a service technician coming to control them every now and then), power lines (obvious) and high-rise buildings (for the companies who build and operate those windmills). Possibly they'll also produce hunting (I can't currently find any link, but I'm sure with enough creativity, you'll find one). So you have to add all those birds killed by those activities to the numbers of windmills. You'll see immediately that the resulting sum is larger than the effect of any activity you mentioned.

    And don't tell me that this calculation is not serious. After all, the RIAA gets away with this type of calculation all the time!

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  2. Windmills by Dr.+Cody · · Score: 5, Funny

    TFA does not talk about transmission. How exactly they are going to manage a good reliable power transmission with the kind of floating power station, Any idea?
    Well, the summary says they're windmills, so I assume it will be transmitted in the form of flour.
  3. Spin 'Em Up! by toddhisattva · · Score: 5, Funny

    can we please spare the feckless comments on injuring birds Nope. The environmentalists buttered their bread and now they have to lie in it. For over a century they have whined about every overspecialized subspecies being "endangered."

    Now it's time to use their own bullshit against them. It is time to shut down every idiotic "green" project by any means necessary. Building a wind farm? Expect to hear every single lie told about conventional power thrown back in your face.

    All those power lines leaking radiation into the environment!

    Wind turbines have huge carbon footprints because of their refined metal content. The only carbon-neutral wind turbines are made of wood.

    The iron used in wind turbines has a half-life of billions of years!

    The quantum flux caused by their rotating magnets makes eggshells thinner.

    The vanes mix the air and cause acid rain.

    Electricity from wind turbines has been shown to cause moleculitis in kids.

    Using dozens of tiny generators instead of one big generator puts tons more negative ions into the atmosphere. Or is it positive ions? It better not be neutral ions, because those are pure poison.

    --
    Usually, I am against using lies to counter lies. The corrective for lies is truth. But in this case, I expect the creative use of lies to illustrate previous lies will be funny as hell, because it is so deserved.

    Hoist by their own petard. Hehe, I said "petard."