A norweigian energy company, Norsk Hydro, has developed a windmill, "Hywind", to be placed into the ocean. It will rice 80 meters above the water, that's roughly 262 feet for you ISO-handicapped people ;), and will be 120 meters submerged.What an excellent idea! Think about it. Who cares the the deep ocean looks like? But people do care what their beach lines looks like.
Welcome to the future!
http://www.hydro.com/en/Press-room/News/Archive/2007/06/Technology-cooperation-on-full-scale-floating-wind-turbines/
Update 18.6.2016
The prototype has been working great in Norway. Now they are setting up a farm in Scotland
5 comments:
Well, as a matter of fact, som people _do care_ what the ocean looks like. Oceans cover the largest part of the planets surface and they are the least known region on the planet. While it may seem that all that space is empty or desolate, the oceans are actually quite a fragile ecosystem and a crucial resource that we cannot live without.
And windmills? Did you know that windmills kill huge amounts of marine birds every year. Windmills chop up birds as effectively as a chainsaw would take care of a packet of hot dogs. Not a nice sight. In addition, it would take thousands and again thousands of windmills to even partially cover the electricity need of modern society.
Which one would you rather see? A nuclear plant or 50 000 windmills?
I'd rather see efficiency and reduction of consumption. Yes it would take thousands of windmills. But it would take exactly one bad nuclear accident to kill millions and millions of creatures and irreparably harm the ecosystem. I'll be damned if you mess up the earth for generations just to run your cloths drier!
How would the ocean windmills even get their power to land? The deep ocean is miles from any land and then once on land then it must be wired to power plants. Doesn't seem to be a very good idea.
How it will be fixed down in the platform of the ocean ? How do you think you will have stability with all the currents underneath ?
To the comments above to do with stability and power transport. These are SOLVED engineering problems. New offshore wind turbines are being designed that do not need to be planted to the sea bed, they are designed to be stable in wild sea conditions but are supported by shallow buoyancy aids.
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