NewEnergyNews: Floating the Future of Offshore Wind/

NewEnergyNews

Gleanings from the web and the world, condensed for convenience, illustrated for enlightenment, arranged for impact...

The challenge now: To make every day Earth Day.

YESTERDAY

THINGS-TO-THINK-ABOUT WEDNESDAY, August 23:

  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And The New Energy Boom
  • TTTA Wednesday-ORIGINAL REPORTING: The IRA And the EV Revolution
  • THE DAY BEFORE

  • Weekend Video: Coming Ocean Current Collapse Could Up Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Impacts Of The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current Collapse
  • Weekend Video: More Facts On The AMOC
  • THE DAY BEFORE THE DAY BEFORE

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 15-16:

  • Weekend Video: The Truth About China And The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: Florida Insurance At The Climate Crisis Storm’s Eye
  • Weekend Video: The 9-1-1 On Rooftop Solar
  • THE DAY BEFORE THAT

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 8-9:

  • Weekend Video: Bill Nye Science Guy On The Climate Crisis
  • Weekend Video: The Changes Causing The Crisis
  • Weekend Video: A “Massive Global Solar Boom” Now
  • THE LAST DAY UP HERE

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, July 1-2:

  • The Global New Energy Boom Accelerates
  • Ukraine Faces The Climate Crisis While Fighting To Survive
  • Texas Heat And Politics Of Denial
  • --------------------------

    --------------------------

    Founding Editor Herman K. Trabish

    --------------------------

    --------------------------

    WEEKEND VIDEOS, June 17-18

  • Fixing The Power System
  • The Energy Storage Solution
  • New Energy Equity With Community Solar
  • Weekend Video: The Way Wind Can Help Win Wars
  • Weekend Video: New Support For Hydropower
  • Some details about NewEnergyNews and the man behind the curtain: Herman K. Trabish, Agua Dulce, CA., Doctor with my hands, Writer with my head, Student of New Energy and Human Experience with my heart

    email: herman@NewEnergyNews.net

    -------------------

    -------------------

      A tip of the NewEnergyNews cap to Phillip Garcia for crucial assistance in the design implementation of this site. Thanks, Phillip.

    -------------------

    Pay a visit to the HARRY BOYKOFF page at Basketball Reference, sponsored by NewEnergyNews and Oil In Their Blood.

  • ---------------
  • WEEKEND VIDEOS, August 24-26:
  • Happy One-Year Birthday, Inflation Reduction Act
  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 1
  • The Virtual Power Plant Boom, Part 2

    Friday, April 13, 2012

    Floating the Future of Offshore Wind

    Floating the Future of Offshore Wind; A disruptive technology from Principle Power set to sea in November; utility-scale wind’s future may have been aboard.
    Herman K. Trabish, January 6, 2012 (Greentech Media)

    click to enlarge

    Disruptive technologies are like the weather: Lots of talk and little action. But Principle Power has a disruptive floating wind turbine technology and a prototype in the water generating electricity.

    It's a “paradigm shift in the approach to offshore wind,” said Principle Power Chief Business Development Officer Craig Andrus, “because it opens up a footprint that right now is not available.”

    Incumbent offshore wind technology is limited to fixed platforms and 50-meter depths, while it faces increased opposition because of environmental impacts. Principle Power’s WindFloat, Andrus said, resolves the depth limitation and “mitigates many of the issues and some of the risks.”

    Because it is “structurally decoupled from the sea floor,” Andrus explained, “there are significantly reduced environmental impacts during deployment, little harm to the seabed, and, because of siting flexibility, negative visual impact can be eliminated.”

    WindFloat, Andrus claimed, potentially opens up rich new markets in waters previously thought inaccessibly deep, such as those off the U.S. Pacific Coast, across the Mediterranean, along the coast of Japan and in the British Isles’ deeper waters.

    Principle Power was formed in 2007 to guide renewable technologies from the lab to the marketplace. “Very early on,” Andrus recounted, “we were presented with this opportunity” of Marine Innovation & Technology’s semi-submersible floating platform. Designed for marginal oil field exploration, MI&T’s concept turned out to be “optimally suited to offshore wind deployment.”

    In November 2011, a WindFloat bearing a two-megawatt Vestas wind turbine was towed out to sea by a standard, anchor-handling tugboat and positioned with a catenary mooring configuration using chain and drag embedment anchors.



    Stability comes from WindFloat’s three submerged ballast columns attached by a triangle of beams. The turbine tower sits atop a column that contains relatively little water ballast. The other two columns have more ballast, enough to steady the approximately 400- to 800-ton turbine.

    Broad flat heave plates at the bottom of each ballast column add stability. Balancing is passive as the WindFloat system seeks equilibrium.

    The paradigm shift comes from the many advantages of a floating, deep water system, the first being cost.

    “We see this being commercialized with large turbines,” Andrus said, because “cost per megawatt is reduced.” Going “from a two-megawatt to a five-megawatt turbine,” Andrus said, “increases power two-and-a-half times but increases foundation size by only 20 percent to 30 percent.” WindFloat, Andrus explained, “will be optimal for existing five-plus-megawatt turbines in development today and for the even larger turbines envisioned for the near future.”

    Andrus provided no specifics about WindFloat costs, implying such details are both proprietary and premature. Economies of scale, he predicted, will eventually change cost considerations completely. “This business is all about scale,” he said, though an independent GL GH study, he added, found the WindFloat “very cost competitive” with jacket foundations.

    The prototype now in service off the coast of Portugal was towed from the dry dock south of Lisbon where it and its Vestas turbine were readied for an ocean energy test site some 350 kilometers to the north, off the coast of Aguçadoura.

    Because it was assembled quay-side and towed by a standard tug, Andrus explained, it eliminated two significant limitations of existing offshore wind technologies. There was no need for either costly ocean construction or the cranes and equipment needed to do that work.

    The system was linked to Portugal’s grid via a subsea cable originally installed for Pelamis Wave Energy converters in September 2008 in the world’s first utility-scale wave energy trial. The harsh ocean environment and vigorous waves ended that trial early.

    “We’re fortunate to have our first trial in a challenging environment,” Andrus said. “It would have been easier to be in a lake with few waves but I’m not sure what that would prove.” In answer to a question about what has been learned in WindFloat’s first two months, Andrus would only say, “So far, so good.”

    The other utility-scale floating wind technology is Statoil’s Hywind. “They were in the water ahead of us,” Andrus said of the project that drew on the Norwegian national oil company’s experience in deep water oil platform design and has been successfully generating electricity since mid-2009. “It’s a spar technology with a Siemens 2.3-megawatt turbine,” Andrus added.

    Andrus was unconcerned about the competition. “If you think of the footprint that floating wind opens up, I’m not too worried.” Like the several oil and gas platform technologies currently in use, he said, “There are applications that will favor one technology over the other.”

    Principle Power’s partners in the WindPlus Joint Venture WindFloat trial include Portuguese mega-utility Energias de Portugal, A. Silva Matos, Vestas Wind Systems A/S, InovCapital, Fundo de Apoio a Inovacao, and 60+ European vendors.

    The current two-year trial is the first of three WindFloat development phases. The next “pre-commerical” phase will involve five larger turbines. Its timing depends on funding that may come from a European Commission grant program.

    WindFloat, Andrus noted, has drawn the interest of developers in the U.K. Crown Estate’s Round Three program and has had interest from the German offshore industry, as well, where dramatic expansion is imminent following the Merkel government’s decision to abandon nuclear power.

    "We’re also excited about the U.S.," Andrus said. “It is hard to know when that will take off, but when it does, we want to be a part of it.”

    0 Comments:

    Post a Comment

    << Home