Dutch Utility Plans Massive Wind Farm Island In North Sea (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: Britain's homes could be lit and powered by wind farms surrounding an artificial island deep out in the North Sea, under advanced plans by a Dutch energy network. The radical proposal envisages an island being built to act as a hub for vast offshore wind farms that would eclipse today's facilities in scale. Dogger Bank, 125km (78 miles) off the East Yorkshire coast, has been identified as a potentially windy and shallow site. The power hub would send electricity over a long-distance cable to the UK and Netherlands, and possibly later to Belgium, Germany, and Denmark. TenneT, the project's backer and Dutch equivalent of the UK's National Grid, recently shared early findings of a study that said its plan could be billions of euros cheaper than conventional wind farms and international power cables. The sci-fi-sounding proposal is sold as an innovative answer to industry's challenge of continuing to make offshore wind cheaper, as turbines are pushed ever further off the coast to more expensive sites as the best spots closer to land fill up.

Comments

Re:Can someone explain why this is better?

[xlsior]

I mean, I get it's not an eyesore as some people claim, if it's offshore, but surely the cost of shipping the items out there and running a hefty cable back to land is astronomical? Also servicing?

Is there that little free land in the region?

A few things to consider:
- There is indeed little free space the way it is -- the entire country is about twice the size of New Jersey, with similar population density. (16,000 square miles, over 17,000,000 people, 1062 people per square mile). No sky scrapers.
- The Netherlands is *really* flat -- about half is actually below sea level, and probably over 80% at less than 8m / 25 ft above sea level.
- You'll get much higher wind speeds / more energy generation on top of hills (of which there are few), or off-shore in the middle of unobstructed sea.
- The North Sea is relatively shallow (overall mean depth of 300ft/ 90 meters, but much shallower in many areas. Still, I'd expect that they'd use artificial structures similar to oil drill platforms to install the windmills rather than 'true' islands