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Giant Floating Windmills To Launch Next Year
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."
A power cable.
The raft wont be floating freely, it will be anchored to a specific spot where the conditions for wind is good. However its much cheaper to use than construction something from the sea bottom in deep water. Most sea wind power are close to shore wind power plants that is build where the water is shallow or on islands. With this techonolgy a wind farm can be set up in deep water where the wind conditions are good.
Just saying it like it are.
Will make them a little hard to tilt against. A charge on horseback is nearly as dramatic when they are out at sea.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
Taking out an albatross could be bad luck.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Indeed, Denmark already has extensive offshore windfarm resources, and they produce a good percentage of their power from wind as well. A small country like Ireland could well produce most or all of its power with this technology.
This also solves the issue with noise from wind generators anchored in deep water, which the Danes have estimated could cause problems for whales - sound travels much farther in deep water.
And can we please spare the feckless comments on injuring birds, large size windmills move much too slowly to cause a bird damage unless they ploughed into it headlong, and any bird that would do that will have difficulties with flying into cliffs as well.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
because solar panels can easily be fitted onto roofs, and looking out of my window, i can still see hundreds that don't have 'em yet, so putting solar panels out into the sea sounds a waste of time.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
They've discovered that a relatively unorthodox technology, known as "peer to peer" is a good solution. Unfortunately big corporations have made it illegal in every country but sweden. The upshot is that, instead of using the natural infrastructure of a p2p network that already exists, the company will be based in sweden, and all of the floating windmills will be directly tied to their HQ, by long cables. From sweden, the company will then export it back to your house, beside the windmill, on trucks.
But don't worry, you will get a shiny plastic wrapper for your 1-ton battery, and an insert with lots of credits to the corporations who made it possible, and copyright notices.
the majority of the surface area on a wind turbine is tilted at an angle unsuitable for that. the only place that would make sense is probably the top of the cabin. The Blades are subject to a lot of stress/deformation, might also be that solar cells don't handle that well.
I don't get this bird killing thing. I've spent lots of time walking amongst the giant wind turbines around Tehachapi, CA where I grew up. I never saw a dead bird out there nor had I ever heard of these things killing birds until just a few years ago. Does anyone actually have any data on this? So far it sounds like an urban legend.
the latest generation of windmills produce electricity by wind speeds up to 30m/s, and at higher speeds, they just turn the blades out of the wind, so they won't get damaged.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
Critically offshore winds tend to be much more steady than winds on land, where topography, trees, and buildings combine to create turbulence and resulting gusts. At sea the winds have nothing to slow them down meaning higher output, and nothing to make them subject to sudden gusts meaning less wear and tear on the gears (a squall or frontal gust mainly has a single onset and slow relaxation) and more predictable output.
* Being able to go deeper means further offshore, which means less people on land looking for an easy pay off due to bogus eyesore / property value complaints.
* In a massive storm these ones lean over, spilling away the force of the wind and reducing exposed surface area as cos(tilt).
* The bird cuisinart effect is largely debunked. Many more are killed flying into windows (home or glass box buildings), stationary bridges and radio towers, and hit by cars while attending to roadkill. Many studies out there to back this up. "Homepower magazine" does a nice job of collecting peer reviewed studies (they had a great writeup on it, but I can't find that now). Also need to balance against the more dilute effect of wildlife killed by a coal plant's SO2 etc emissions. Granted most studies are not looking at sea birds.
~.~
I'm a peripheral visionary.
Studies show that the number of birds killed by wind turbines is negligible compared to the number that die as a result of other human activities such as traffic, hunting, power lines and high-rise buildings...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Birds
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.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Tests carried out in Denmark for shallow installations showed the levels were only significant up to a few hundred metres. However, sound injected into deeper water will travel much further and will be more likely to impact bigger creatures like whales which tend to use lower frequencies than porpoises and seals. A recent study found that wind farms add 80â"110 dB to the existing low-frequency ambient noise (under 400 Hz), which could impact baleen whales communication and stress levels, and possibly prey distribution.
As far as I understand it, towers will transmit the noise directly to the ocean floor, but a floating platform, even if anchored, distributes most of the noise at the surface, although I could be mistaken in that.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
Here is an old article I remembered about and fortunately google brought it up http://www.coxwashington.com/reporters/content/reporters/stories/2005/11/13/BC_WINDMILLS_BATS_ADV13_COX.html
From the article
" Towering up to 228 feet above the Appalachian Mountain ridge, far above the tree line, windmills are lined up like marching aliens from War of the Worlds.
Up close, they emit a high-pitched electrical hum. From a distance of a few hundred yards, their 115-foot blades make a steady whooshing sound as their tips cut through the air at up to 140 mph."
"A study conducted at FPL's Mountaineer Wind Energy Center here this year indicated that its 44 turbines may have caused between 1,300 and 2,000 bat deaths in a six-week period. That study was led by Edward B. Arnett, a scientist with Bat Conservation International, and financed largely by the American Wind Energy Association and its 700 member companies."
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Thanks.
I found a better article that explains the concept with better pictures.
hilarious
Why not include a wave generator as part of the system?
For the rare individual who does not know. A wave generator in this context does not make waves but uses the motion of waves to generate electricity.
On the other hand -- I've noticed very small p/v and wind turbine installations popping up on the roadsides in our area in the last few years - powering things like illumination lights for traffic signs, lights at bus-stops, speed-triggered LED speed warning signs and the like. The wind turbines are dinky things with rotor diameters of perhaps three or four feet. (Note, this is along the shore of the Severn Estuary, which is presumably more reliably windy than most places inland.) I'm curious if manufacturing economies of scale have brought such small devices down to the point that they're cost effective, as well as green, anyone know?
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
To help our understanding of turbine hazards to birds we'd like to make an analogy, to your bicycle. Turn your bike upside down or put it in a work rack, set it to the highest gear...the one you use to go fast on a level slope.... and now move the wheel slowly with your hand. The chain moves rapidly with only a few degrees of wheel rotation. This symbolizes today's cutting edge 1.5 mW turbines, which have a very large surface area of blade exposed to the wind and a gearbox that turns the dynamo quickly while the blades move slowly. Birds dodge these slow moving blades relatively easily.
Now put the bike in the lowest gear...the one you use to climb hills...and move the wheel with your hand fast enough to turn the chain as fast as before. That symbolizes the 20-year-old "bird-o-matic" wind turbine design. Small blades with small surface areas have to turn rapidly to overcome the magnetic force of the dynamos, which generate electricity.
Recapping: small blades, low surface area, lots of dead birds possible; very big blades, with large surface area exposed to wind, very few dead birds.
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.
>How exactly they are going to manage a good reliable power transmission
>with the kind of floating power station, Any idea?
The subsurface structure:
Water depth: about 220 m (approx. 720 ft); buouy is a cylinder standing vertical in the water, the draft is about 100 m (305 ft);- buoy diameter, say 10 m.
Topside structure/turbine data:
Operating wind speed: 3-27 m/s; about 40 m long blades; rated capacity and speed: 2.3 MW; 5-15 rpm.
Mooring system:
Attached to buoy at about mid-point (say at depth 50 m); 3 mooring lines.
The power transmission system, the electrical cable:
The cable is attached to the buoy at either depth 50 m or at buoy bottom. The buoy will be subjected to both dynamic and static motion due to waves, currents and wind. The static motion is mainly horizontal offset caused by the static loads that are counteracted by the mooring system. The cable arrangement is able to adjust to these buoy motions without mechanical overload, this is achieved by the following methods:
1. Bend stiffener in the interface with the buoy (a 2-3 m long conical plastic thing which main purpose is to avoid overbending and associated fatigue damage in the interface with the buoy.
2. The cable is arranged in a compliant riser configuration between seabed and buoy, this allows the spar buoy to move without causing excessive tension and bending in the cable. This effect is achieved by "storing" over-lenght in a buoyant cable section. Hence - when the buoy moves - cable lenght is simply "paid" out (or in) from the buoyant section. Starting at the buoy there is a bend stiffener followed by say 150 m cable, then perhaps 60 m cable equipped with buoyancy until eventually there is cable to the seabed. There is of course an anchor somewhere at the seabed to keep the cable fixed.
The above technology is well known from the oil industry, the described riser configuration is a so called "pliant wave" or "lazy wave configuration". The main challenges with this concept is that it is new uncharted territory and that we do not yet know the actual parameters. Our experience is from the oil business, where such cables between platform and seabed are routinely used.
Greetings from a member of the engineering team within Nexans Norway AS, the Halden plant, which will design and manufacture the power transmission for the Hywind project.
"Just environmentalists looking for a reason to hate the technology."
People who shun technology are called Ludites.
The last time I heard of a windfarm cancelled because of birds was here in the state of Victoria in Australia, it was about 2yrs ago. It was a right-wing government minister that killed the project, obsetnsibly because of concerns by experts over "rare birds". This proffesional anti-environmentalist trawled the environmental impact statement and found a mention of (IIRC) the orange-bellied parrot. He was the one who chose to kill the project there were no prosteters, and the impact statement had given the project the thumbs-up.
The "environmentalists" have been ranting about wind farms since the 1970's, the vast majority of people (green or otherwise) knew the bird thing was bullshit and wanted the farm. However when the minister cancelled the project because "experts said rare parrots were found breeding in the area", mass-media dutifully blamed "environmentalists".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Birds What about human activities like
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
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."