Floating wind turbine launched

The world’s first floating wind turbine is to be towed out to sea this weekend.

Statoil’s Alexandra Beck Gjorv told the BBC the technology, the Hywind, to be put off Norway’s coast – “should help move offshore wind farms out of sight”.

And it could lead to offshore wind farms eventually being located many miles offshore, away from areas where they cause disruption, Ms Gjorv added.

This would benefit military radar operations, the shipping industry, fisheries, bird life and tourism.

“Taking wind turbines to sea presents new opportunities,” said Ms Gjorv, of Statoil’s new energy division.

“The wind is stronger and more consistent [and] areas are large.”

The Hywind, a 2.3 megawatt (MW) wind turbine built by Siemens, combines technologies from both the wind farming industry and the oil and gas sectors, and will be tested off the coast of Norway for two years.

In a similar way to how large parts of icebergs are hidden below the sea surface, the turbine has a 100 metre draft that is anchored to the seabed with cables, that can be up to 700 metres long.

Read more . . .

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Tags: Innovation, new energy, new opportunities, offshore wind farms, sea surface, seabed, shipping industry, statoil, wind farming, wind turbine, wind turbines

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 9:07 am and is filed under BBC, Innovation, Project Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.