World’s First Floating Wind Turbine Opens in Norway
The world’s very first floating fullscale offshore wind turbine has officially been inaugurated in the North Sea off the coast of Norway.
The turbine even has a name: Hywind. It measures 213 feet tall and weighs 5,300 tonnes, and it rests on a floating stand which is filled with water and rocks to provide balast. Three powerful cables anchor the stand to the seafloor.
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StatoilHydro, the corporate energy giant which owns Hywind, plans to use it as a test for the next two years before building any more floating wind turbines. But if everything runs smoothly, they hope to set up floating turbines around the world for international partners, locations which are likely to include California, Japan, South Korea and Spain.
The biggest advantage to floating turbines is that they can operate out at sea at depths between 120 and 700 metres, much deeper than conventional offshore turbines. Winds are usually much stronger in deeper seas, meaning the new technology could also generate a lot more power.
And for those people who find wind turbines aesthetically unpleasing, floating turbines put further out to sea also mean they’ll be out of sight.
Currently floating turbines are significantly more expensive to build, but due to their many advantages, StatoilHydro believes that the costs should come down over time. “Our goal is to bring down the price to the level of fixed wind turbines that are currently installed in waters some 60 metres deep,” said Anne Stroemmen Lycke from StatoilHydro.
Hywind should begin fanning over the North Sea and generating electricity within the next couple of weeks.
Source: Physorg
Image Credit: Magnera on Flickr under a CC License
I just sent this to the Ministry of Enterprise, Energy, and Communications, Sweden.
Dear Sir or Madam,
Can you please get the information here to the people attempting to help slow global warming. What they are doing only exaccerbates the situation.
Current (80m high) “technology” is a bad apple. Completely unsustainable (without oil, gas, Etc.) Here is why.
(TAD - Turbine Alternator Device )
1) TADs have an unusual “Economy of Size”,
The cost of facing a given area of weather, is necklace-shaped
function of (log) SIZE of the TADs deployed, because the two
components (T and A) have Opposite “Economy of Size”.
Viz.
One T to replace 4 of half the diameter will require 8 times the
quantity of materials (of any one of the 4) to make. The cost of 1/4
as many turbines of twice the diameter, is therefore DOUBLE that of
the 4 times as many which they replace.
Meanwhile
One A of 4 times the thro’put, costs only about twice as much as any
one of the 4 which it replaces, in my experience. The Alternator bill
is therefore HALVED by doubling the diameter of the TADs. (and making
1/4 as many)
Lowest farm-cost ocurrs around sizes where the Ts costs about the
same as the As. This appears to happen at around 0.5 to 1.5? m
diameter !! (for a very effective design) - which just Happens,
to be a very convenient size. email for .jpg
2)
Current (80m high) “technology” runs at constant revs. which
wastes high winds, causing the power taken from the wind to be more or
less “pro-rata” with windspeed. They still manage to be wiping-out
the last few Golden Eagles in Italy, though, so “that’s quite useful
if you farm sheep” I guess.
The power taken from the wind, by a TAD running at a speed which
varies to suit the wind, ( instead of changing the angle of the
“blades” (wings)) is Cubicly related to windspeed.
Yours faithfully
More power to Wind Turbines! We need them through-out the world. They will never provide the kind of power Americans and the “American Dream” have appetite for, but the rest of the world, not spoiled by a “Cheap Oil Age” gets along just fine on much much less! We do however need to look closely at the economics of Super-Insulation and its technologies and methodology, with respect to living comfortably and modestly in European style, using Wind, Solar, Wave, Hydro, Tidal and Geo-thermal Power sources. Thrift, and not wasting are very important, to us, so super-insulation technologies may extend even these resources and allow even more folk to survive in comfort, or make practical otherwise impossible situations. LED lights at reasonable cost can make even indoor gardening practical in colder climates, Smaller more heat efficient dwellings can contribute, and high veggie diets, fish enhanced through aquaculture will add to the growing list of means to a happy end for many! Off-Grid independent lifestyles, computer connected, and shared technologies, a new world free from the “Ugly American” influences of sloth and sick sexuality, drug infestations, STD’s AIDS, and drunkenness. One thinks of the new French Canada and smiles! Sweden perhaps and surely Norway, who now power their city buses with bio-gas! God help America! She was fun to watch until now, the bitter end! Detroit city declared the new World Johannesburg and folks eating road kill possums there, and paying for them! American corporatism’s monument to Capitalism! A Brussels, no. Copenhagen? no. Tokyo? no. Detroit city! Yes! and it stinks! too!
“Off-Grid independent lifestyles, computer connected, and shared technologies, a new world free from the “Ugly American” influences of sloth and sick sexuality, drug infestations, STD’s AIDS, and drunkenness. ”
Uncle B,
One thing I can say about Americans is at least we bathe, and don’t reek to high heaven like the unkempt, unshaven and unwashed Europeans. But I’m sure that being a filthy animal meshes well with your “off the grid” lifestyle.
Warchild
Good one Warchild, what a come-back! Bathing technology has past by the Europeans, take that! BTW your president just spent an odd 2 billion in wind energy. I’d rather be an unkempt hippie, than a gun toting, short sighted, ego manic, shallow, predictable american’t.