The Future Of Offshore Wind Power? Presentation By David Campbell

Current Wind Power Options Wind turbines on land have always faced a lot of public opposition. One solution to this issue is to place these offshore, however, these are only cost effective in water up to 50m deep. This is due to the fact that the tower of the turbine has to be sunk up to 30m into the seabed, and the deeper you go the wider these have to be at the base.

The Way Forward? Two companies, StatoilHydro and Blue H Technologies are developing and testing floating turbines which can be used in much deeper waters. StatoilHydro have placed a 2.3MW turbine 10km off the coast of Norway. These turbines use the same design of buoy that is successfully used for floating gas and oil drilling platforms. PHOTO: Solberg Production / StatoilHydro PHOTO: Øyvind Hagen / StatoilHydro 100m below sea level.

U.S.A Offshore Wind Potential vs. Predicted E.U Shallow Water Installations 1 According to the World Energy Council

My Conclusion  StatoilHydro’s project $62.5m and could well be a future alternative to building wind-farms either on land or in shallow waters close to the coast.  Blue H Technologies, in 2008, installed a prototype 80kw turbine off the coast of Puglia, Italy. They are now looking to install a 3.5mw demo unit off Martha’s Vineyard in the U.S.  However I believe thorough testing needs to be completed, the design of the buoy has been successful in the past, but not for this type of project.  Lastly, the issue of how to transfer the power generated from these turbines to the power grid has not been addressed. If cables were to be used, are there power cables already in use which could stand the perpetual movement of the sea? Would this have an impact of the cost of installation or the range of these turbines?

References Patel, P. Retrieved December 2008 from IEEE Spectrum - tech/wind Wikipedia (Images) – Retrieved December 2008 from