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Ocean windfarms will be tragic for millions of seabirds who live and
feed on the ocean, skating over waves and diving to gather food.
Everyone has a NIMBY attitude toward energy production, but I say
put the thing on my house! My neighborhood is already a
constructed and modified habitat. Our oceans face enough threats
with pollution and other human changes, we should not turn them
into energy production that causes as much damage as strip mining
does to the land.
The Portuguese coast may be the site of the first ever floating offshore wind turbines. If all goes well, the wind industry could embark into deeper and windier seas.Vestas, a Danish company that has installed about half the world’s more ‘traditional’ offshore wind farms, has agreed to supply Energias de Portugal (EDP) with a single turbine to test the waters for floating turbines. They will test the turbine for at least a year before sending the apparatus into the eastern Atlantic.
I first discussed the WindFloat Project last summer when a feasibility report deemed the semi-submersible structures would not topple over in rough waves. The three legs of the platform, set 115 feet apart, will feature a closed-loop ballast system and 80-foot-wide horizontal plates to counteract ocean’s movement and hopefully, keep the platform level and the windmill upright.
Alla Weinstein of Principle Power, the Seattle-based company that developed WindFloat, says in a statement:
We at Principle Power welcome the EDP Group and Vestas as early adopters of our enabling technology. All the industrial skills and facilities needed are available in Portugal. This project is a significant step forward for Portugal in meeting its 2020 renewable energy generating targets and harvesting its deepwater offshore wind resources.
The Vestas V80 turbine will have a capacity of 2 megawatts. The platforms can apparently keep a 5 megawatt turbine steady in water depths up to 164 feet.
Installing extra tall turbines into deep lake bottoms has been one issue facing the potential offshore wind industry in the Great Lakes.
In other deep endeavors, Deepwater Wind plans to build four-legged platforms that attach to seabeds of 170 feet beneath the surface. The proposed 1,000-megawatt wind farm would be about 18 to 27 miles off the coasts of Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Deeper still, is HyWind pilot project in the North Sea. This turbine design involves a single, floating pole with a 3-point mooring spread attached to the sea floor. According to Hywind, the turbine could perform in seas of more than 330 feet.
Watch how WindFloat is meant to work in the video below:
Related on SmartPlanet:
Images: Vestas
Via: Cleantechnica
