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.
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.
I suppose I’m as ugly an American as any, but can we all be that awful? Really? I have traveled in Europe for business and pleasure (Italy, Holland, Geneva to name just one year’s time.) I have met many wonderful people every time. Nearly all of them sweet smelling, well scrubbed and orthodontically correct. I have also met a few ‘ugly’ Italians, Dutch, Swedes, Germans, French, etc. Such a surprise, the US doesn’t have a monopoly on assholes. Or if Americans really are all that bad I’m probably just seeing my own ignorance, stupidity, unkindness and provincial attitude reflected right back at me. That must explain it.
You do have some solid points Uncle B, no matter how rudely you might make them. Our level of consumption, power in particular can not be sustained forever. It will have to change. We have begun to make those changes however small or halting our steps may be ($2B for wind energy did you say?) One major aspect of change for our energy infrastructure that’s often overlooked is the staggering physical size of the country. Solutions that work in countries that are smaller than half our states often would not work here. Or rather would work regionally but not on a national scale. With the size and diverse landscape of the US I doubt there is a single solution for us – though a strong push to cut back on demand is the real key, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. It will have to come, and I and many other “American’ts” will be happy to see that day arrive.
Government corruption in the US?! Gasp!! So unsurprising that there is no such thing in the US as an investigative reporter covering it. The copy doesn’t sell. A public official caught taking a bribe? Yawn!
As for thrift, Europe does not have a monopoly. My grandparents lived through our great depression and two world wars. Not accomplished through waste. They put two daughters through college (when an educated woman was seen as an oxymoron) with no loans, no grants. Nothing but hard won cash. My mother raised two boys on her own while working days and continuing her education at night. No one I know is a stranger to hard work either mentally or physically. Are there examples of waste, sloth and ignorance in America? Plenty. Without question. But America is hardly over. During the great depression, capitalism and democracy were repeatedly said to be done. ‘fraid not. They still have life left in them.
I do believe we are in the midst of a transition. And as with all change there will be resistance, mis-steps and lots of argument but it will come. It won’t be perfection but it will be better.
And the collapse of Detroit has been a long time in coming. I don’t mean to say they ‘deserved’ it, not at all, but manufacturing in this country has been a dead end for 30 years. Our standard of living became so high that to maintain it the average factory worker’s wages priced him out of a supply chain based on overly cheap goods. It had to come and the financial collapse we had in September of 08 finally kicked the legs out from under.
So, glad you can gloat in the face of so many millions out of work and put out of their homes. I do hope being right after the fact is enough ’super-insulation’ to keep you warm at night.
Oh, I almost forgot Uncle B. The “American Dream” you speak of? You have it wrong. The American Dream is the dream of rebirth. The idea that one can remake him/her self. We are not constrained by the “place” into which we were born – a very common notion in the rest of the world even today. My grandmother when traveling in England was once ‘lectured’ by a Britton about actors in England ‘knowing their place’. She was talking about Ronald Regan. Whether one cares for Regan or not, it does point to a fundimental difference of perspective. There, it is socially essential for one to ‘know one’s place’ and to stay put. Be born in your place, learn to know your place, work to stay in your place, die in your place. The very concept is so anti-American it makes our skin itch.
I do hope you and I live long enough to see America reborn. It’s happened countless times before and is likely to happen again.