Green Technology

A Given:  Wind Power is one solution to our energy needs.
 
Good:  Off Shore Windmills
Better:  FAR off shore Windmills where the winds are stronger and the windmills are not visible?

A Problem:  NIMBY (who can blame them?)

The Solution:  Part windmill.  Part floating platform. 

 

"Offshore wind turbines are an excellent source of power that could potentially serve hundreds of thousands of consumers ... (using) floating platforms hundreds of miles out to sea, where the winds are even stronger? That is where Paul D. Sclavounos comes in. The MIT professor of mechanical engineering and naval architecture spent decades designing and analyzing large floating structures for deep-sea oil and gas exploration."

" ... Their design calls for a tension leg platform, a system in which long steel cables, or “tethers,” connect the corners of the platform to a concrete-block or other mooring system on the ocean floor. The platform and turbine gain their support from buoyancy."

"... could work in water depths ranging from 30 to 200 meters, Sclavounos said. In the Northeast, they could be 50 to 150 kilometers from shore. And the turbine atop each platform could be big, which is an economic advantage in the wind-farm business. The MIT-NREL design assumes a 5.0 megawatt (MW) experimental turbine now being developed by industry. (Onshore units are 1.5 MW; conventional offshore units are 3.6 MW.)"

"  ... Computer simulations show in hurricane conditions the ... bottom of the turbine blades would remain well above the peak of even the highest wave."

"... Because of the strong offshore winds, the floating turbines should produce up to twice as much electricity per year (per installed megawatt) as wind turbines now in operation. And because the wind turbines do not permanently attach to the ocean floor, they are a movable asset. If a company with 400 wind turbines serving the Boston area needs more power for New York, it can unhook some of the floating turbines and tow them south."

 

 

 

Via:   ISA     Link  and
         MIT    Link