World's first floating wind turbine opens in Norway
September 8, 2009
The world's first floating full-scale offshore wind turbine in the North Sea off the coast of Norway. Norwegian energy giant StatoilHydro said that the world's first floating full-scale offshore wind turbine has been inaugurated in the North Sea off the coast of Norway.
The world's first floating full-scale offshore wind turbine has been inaugurated in the North Sea off the coast of Norway, Norwegian energy giant StatoilHydro said Tuesday.
The turbine known as Hywind, which measures 65 metres (213 feet) tall and weighs 5,300 tonnes, lies some 10 kilometres (seven miles) off the island of Karmoey near the Scandinavian country's southwestern coastline, the company said.
It rests upon a floating stand that is anchored to the seabed by three cables. Water and rocks are placed inside the stand to provide balast.
StatoilHydro plans to test Hywind over the next two years before it looks to set up any more floating wind turbines with international partners.
StatoilHydro sees Japan, South Korea, California, the east coast of the United States and Spain as some of the potential markets to where this technology could be exported.
Hywind can be used in waters from 120 metres to 700 metres deep allowing it to be placed much further away from the shore than static wind turbines already in operation.
StatoilHydro's Anne Stroemmen Lycke told AFP that the floating turbine has "great advantages."
"It is not so easily seen from the coast, it can be placed in areas not used by others," she said.
"We could use such wind turbines in countries where coastal waters are very deep or where there is little space left for land-based turbines," Stroemmen Lycke added.
A total of 400 million kroner (46 million euros, 66 million dollars) has been invested in the 2.3-megawatt floating turbine, making it a far more expensive option than its fixed counterpart.
"Our goal is to bring down the price to the level of fixed wind turbines that are currently installed in waters some 60 metres deep," Stroemmen Lycke said.
France's Technip and Germany's Siemens both worked with the Norwegian energy giant on the Hywind project.
It is set to start producing electricity in the next few weeks, StatoilHydro said.
(c) 2009 AFP
Feb 08, 2010
They gave the windmill free health care and then translated it's owners manual. Then it made sure the french owners manual was larger than the others.
The article does not seem to give much credit for this landmark development, and the value of development quoted above should never be used when comparing the cost of creating new units in the future with those land-based units.
When the cost of purchasing the territory of future windfarms is factored in, I am sure that 'off shore' property is going to start looking very attractive, and the costs of installation and maintenance will reduce as fleets of dedicated vessels are created, along with jobs for folks familiar with sailing and onboard crane operation, (re-equiping and retraining fishing fleets making use of existing skills and personnel).
I think this is great news, and I hope the technology spreads rapidly and far ...
Congratulations to the Hywind team.
Further, the concerns about ElectroMagnetic Fields being created around the turbines producing health risks for local residents can be mitigated, (until confirmed or debunked), by placing wind turbines in these completely uninhabited areas. If this risk is later confirmed, all wind turbines, land and sea based, will need significant upgrades to the EMF shielding.
they overheated and went wiggly.
Also, only electrical things produce e-m fields, so how is a turbine going to do so ?
No utility would ever put up wind turbines with an 800 year payback, more like a few decades but I'd have to check ecotricity or similar. You must have misheard or lost a few words in the meeting. Perhaps it was like our US health care town hall meetings, you wouldn't have heard anything then.
Also wind turbines drive electrical generators hence EMF, but I doubt it would have any effect on animals down on the ground and certainly not outside the wooshing sound zone.
JJ