Water Offshore Wind Farms. Drifting Turbines

Statoil Hydro Company is developing a world's first sea-drifting wind-park within Norsk Hydro Group Investment project.

Gigantic floating turbines will be set in the North Sea to provide ecologically safe and economically reasonable power production.

"It is pretty attractive to have WPT somewhere in the sea, far from land, far from birds' migrating routes, in spaces invisible to the human eye", stated Alexander Beck Gyorv, head of the project at the signing ceremony.

Project's details:

• Each wind turbine's power output - 2.3 Megawatts
• Each turbines weight - 138 tons
• Rotor's height above sea level - 65 meters
• Rotor's diameter - 82.5 meters
• Engine's capacity - 5,300 cubic meters
• Tower's diameter at water level - 6 meters
• Tower's keel part diameter - 8.3 meters
• Tower's underwater keel part size - 100 meters
• Designed to be set in sea or ocean depths over 170 and up to 700 meters
• Maximum distance offshore - 50-100 miles
• Anchorage system - a set of 3 concrete blocks at the bottom + 3 linking cables

The first offshore setting for the wind-park is meant at 10 km distance from Norway coastline near Karmoy.

If all goes well, the wind station is planned to launch as early as in 2012.

The technology has been successfully tested at Trodholm Oceanic Research Center on a 1:47 scale model.

The model helped to recreate conditions for the turbine placed in water with ocean depth at about 320 meters.

The technology has been tested with winds and storms simulated:

• Waves' height - 3 to 14 meters;
• Simulated wind speed - 8 to 30 meters per second.

The preliminary research shows good investment potential for similar wind generated power stations all over the world.

At present, the company has launched its first Hywind prototype with the tower 65 meters above sea level and 2.3-megawatt power output.

Up to 2012 wind-park construction, this prototype will serve as a pilot research project in Norway seawaters.

It is being watched by scientists and engineers adrift at about 12-km distance off Karmoy, Norway, where sea-depth reaches 220 meters.

Several other similar projects are being designed and tested in real and simulated conditions around the world.

Blue H British company successfully tested its first drifting 12-meter prototype in real sea conditions as early as 2007.

It was launched to float in the Adriatic Sea, 12 kilometers offshore in southern Italy, installed at 100-meter sea-depth.

MIT designed gigantic drifting 5-megawatt wind turbines back in 2006. It is safe to say, the project is ready for realization.

Principal Power Company is developing interesting and distinct concept of a drifting wind-park for Oregon.

Each turbine is planned to be set on a platform consisting of three bases.

The structure allows for the entire platform be more mobile as well as it has extra advantages due to its stability and does not require a deep keel part.

The turbine is not very high, which is part of the search for more practical and stable design solution.

Statkraft Company, NLI Innovation and FORCE Technology together are designing a really innovative and enormous project of a drifting wind station called WindSea.

Huge triple turbines are fixed together by one ferry-platform with keel base. Such platforms are more mobile and at the same time stable than any other floating wind stations announced on the market.

Each platform will produce 10 megawatts.

A joined station of 30 such platforms will annually produce 1,200 gigawatts of energy, enough to power 60,000 homes.

All these and other not-mentioned projects are being actively designed and finding their investment support to be finally launched by 2011-2016.