News about Solar, Wind and alternative green power technologies

Among the various types of renewable energy, wind energy is considered to be among the best ones. However, as the turbines increase in size, they also tend to get noisier, becoming more and more of an eyesore as well as needing increasingly bigger expanses of land. In such circumstances there is one solution; making use of wind turbines that are ocean-based. Whilst offshore turbines are already a reality, they have been conventionally been located in shallow waters; this is where the tower stretches out directly into the seabed. As a result the turbines are restricted to waters near the shore whose depths are no more than 50 meters. This also prevents their use in deeper waters where the winds generally blow at higher speeds.

In accordance to the naval architect Dominique Roddier, Berkley, California-based Marine Innovation & Technology, an alternative is to place the turbines on floating platforms. In the recent issue of the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy that is published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP), Dominique Roddier along with his colleagues have published a feasibility study of one such platform design, named “WindFloat”.

Through tests of a 1:65 scale model in a wave tank, the researchers have shown that the three-legged floating platform that is founded on existing oil and gas offshore platform designs is sufficiently stable to hold up a 5-megawatt wind turbine, that is, the biggest turbine that exists presently. These enormous turbines are 70 meters tall with rotors the size approximately that of a football field. Roddier says that a single one is able to produce sufficient energy in order to support a small town.

Roddier stated that the next step will consist of building a prototype so as to comprehend the costs associated with the life-cycle of such projects as well as to improve the economics model. He furthermore said that the model that is being constructed in association with Energias de Portugal, an electricity operator, should eventually be in the waters by the end of summer 2012.

Source: E-science