The notion of floating wind turbines far offshore may have come a nautical mile closer to reality late last month, with the announcement of a collaboration between Norwegian oil and gas producer StatoilHydro and Germany’s Siemens, a major wind-turbine producer. The new partners plan to install what could be the world’s first commercial-scale wind turbine located offshore in deep water. StatoilHydro has allocated 400 million NOK ($78 million) to floating a Siemens turbine in more than 200 meters of water–10 times the depth that conventional offshore wind-turbine foundations can handle–atop a conventional oil and gas platform.
By fall of 2009, the project aims to operate a 2.3-megawatt wind turbine in North Sea about 10 kilometers offshore from Karmøy on Norway’s southwestern tip. That power output is small compared with the 1,054 megawatts of offshore wind installed in European waters by the end of last year. However, proving deep offshore wind will ensure future growth by expanding the range of wind power, according to Anne Strømmen Lycke, StatoilHydro’s vice president for wind power, who says that there are a declining number of sites available onshore and in shallow waters. “Either it’s full already, or there’s resistance or complicated terrain,” says Lycke. “And there are regions without a shallow shelf–California, Japan, Norway–where shallow wind is not possible.”
At least two other firms are also developing floating wind turbines. Both–Blue H of the Netherlands, and Norway’s Sway (itself one-quarter owned by StatoilHydro)–are designing lighter wind turbines to slim down the heft and price tag of the platform required to support them. But Paul Sclavounos, a mechanical engineer at MIT whose lab is designing offshore platforms for wind turbines, has criticized that innovation as misguided at this stage in the technology development, given the complexity and cost of certifying a novel turbine design. In contrast, the project planned by StatoilHydro and Siemens involves mature technologies being implemented by industrial giants.
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