Monday August 03, 2009

Offshore wind power could be next wave for US

peakoil.com -> reuters.com :

The US has experienced a surge in investment in wind power over the past 4 years, more than tripling its ability to turn wind into electricity. But construction has been on land and largely in America's rural midsection - leaving open the costly challenge of how to transmit power to the densely populated coasts where it is most needed. Texas oil billionaire T. Boone Pickens blamed the difficulty of building transmission lines for onshore wind power and the credit crisis for his decision to postpone plans for what would have been the largest US wind farm.

The Cape Wind project in 2001 became the country's first major proposed offshore wind farm. Its developers aim to construct 130 towers, each 440 feet above the Nantucket Sound. The Obama administration sees investment in renewable energy like wind and solar power as a cornerstone of its economic and energy policies. Last year developers invested more than $17 billion in new US wind farms. Wind power now represents more than 1% of the US electricity supply. Companies including General Electric, Siemens and Vestas have seen demand for wind turbines soar.

- Offshore wind power is a tough proposition operationally. If the wind turbines are like 5 or 10 miles offshore, your engineers are going to need something more than a rowboat to go out there to maintain them. The ocean environment is tough and unforgiving, and this is one of the principal reasons why ocean power and offshore wind energy have been taking time to take off. For ocean energy and offshore wind power, the technology is more or less there. It's the operational side that needs addressing, and if these issues can be resolved, then yes it could well be the next wave.

See also :

1. The skyscraper that produces more energy than it consumes
2. Energy security: a look at other fuel sources
3. Synthetic trees aim to capture CO2 from the air

(2009-08-03 20:35:09 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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