- The University of Maine is contributing to a global effort to improve floating machines to harness winds in deeper coastal waters.
- Researchers envision a turbine platform stretching more than 700 feet into the ocean beyond the horizon.
- Floating turbines are the only viable option for U.S. states to capture large-scale offshore wind energy in waters too deep for conventional turbines.
As the waves grew and the gusts grew stronger, the wind turbines rocked gently, their blades spinning with a soft whooshing sound. The storm reached its peak with little drama other than splashing water.
The result of nothing happening is exactly what engineers were aiming for.
The demonstration, which featured a 13-foot-tall floating wind turbine in an indoor swimming pool, was aimed at determining whether a much larger version could withstand the powerful pressures of water and wind when placed in the ocean.
America's first large-scale offshore wind farm has officially opened in New York. More power plants will be added in the future.
It's the University of Maine's contribution to a global race to improve floating machines to take advantage of winds blowing across deeper waters off the coast, which are too deep to attach turbines to the seafloor with permanent piling.
Over the next decade, UMaine researchers say they envision a turbine platform floating in the ocean beyond the horizon, stretching more than 700 feet into the sky and anchored by mooring lines.
“These structures are huge,” Anthony Viselli, senior engineer for offshore wind technology at the university’s Center for Advanced Composites, said after the demonstration. “These may be some of the largest moving structures that humankind has ever tried to create. And there will be many of them.”
Three groups are suing New Jersey to block offshore wind farms.
As technology advances, dozens of designs are being promoted by experts who see floating wind turbines as a way to move away from burning fossil fuels and combat climate change.
Floating turbines are the only way to capture offshore wind energy at scale in some countries and U.S. states. In the United States alone, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, 2.8 terawatts of wind energy potential fly over ocean waters too deep for traditional turbines attached to the seafloor. This is enough to power 350 million homes, more than double the number of existing homes in the United States.
The first floating wind farm began operating off the coast of Scotland in 2017. In the United States, the U.S. Department of the Interior proposed the first floating wind energy auction for the Gulf of Maine two weeks ago, following a West Coast lease auction scheduled to begin in 2022. The nearly 1 million acres up for auction off the New England coast could produce enough clean wind energy to power more than 5 million local homes, the department said.
UMaine has the largest team of engineers in the country dedicated to floating offshore wind. Other major players include Equinor, which has installed a pilot floating project off the coast of Norway. Principle Power, a global company with small-scale projects installed in Scotland and Portugal; There is also SBM Offshore, which is running a pilot project in France.
Floating offshore wind power is still a nascent industry, but it is expensive.
Norwegian company Equinor has postponed its Trollvind floating initiative, citing technology availability, rising costs and a tight timeline to implement the original concept.
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Danish wind energy developer Ørsted has decided to focus its efforts on fixed bottom turbines, excluding deepwater regions including Japan, Norway, Spain, Portugal and the US West Coast. “We are very interested in the economics of renewable energy, and floating wind is much more expensive than fixed-bottom wind,” said CEO Mads Nipper.
But others are moving forward.
Gazelle Wind Power is developing modular platform systems to make manufacturing and assembly cost-effective and efficient.
“This is a global problem and an ideal solution for providing power to our coasts,” said Jon Salazar, CEO of Gazelle Wind Power.
UMaine launched its first floating prototype a decade ago and became a surprising global leader after a study showed that the Gulf of Maine has a wind energy potential equivalent to 156 nuclear power plants, thanks to fast, consistent winds.
The state could utilize just 3% of its water to meet all of its home heating needs and power all of its cars (if they were all electric). This increases the likelihood of successfully sharing resources with fishermen, recreational boaters, the military, and marine life. In fact, the federal lease proposal removes a potential obstacle to the development of Maine's major lobster farms.
Pioneers in offshore wind are benefiting from the oil industry's work in designing floating oil and gas rigs, said Habib Dagher, director of the Advanced Composites Center.
The university's wind wave basin, which looks like a swimming pool with waves and wind generators that can mimic ocean conditions up to a 500-year storm, takes this work one step further.
More recently, semi-submersible floating turbines have been tethered to the bottom of the basin. The 1:70 scale represents the actual turbine standing approximately 240 meters high atop a sea platform. The goal is to have industrial-scale turbines of 15 to 20 MW each, Dagher said.
Scale and efficiency are key to profitability. As wind turbines get larger, fewer wind turbines are needed, reducing construction, installation and maintenance costs, Viselli said. Because of its greater scale and efficiency, developers envision that only about 50 turbines would be needed to produce roughly the same amount of electricity as a nuclear power plant.
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A full-size turbine produces peak power starting at about 20 mph. If a strong storm hits, it will automatically turn off to prevent stress or damage to the equipment. The mooring lines connected to the seabed are made of rope as thick as a telephone pole and are under strong tension. This is safer for marine mammals.
For all turbine technologies, the platforms developed by UMaine can be manufactured locally using concrete, a simple, readily available material. The university already has partners around the world interested in licensing the technology. The state of Maine plans to develop port facilities in the Searsport area to build floating bases and attach turbines before sending them to the Gulf of Maine.
A new industry means that some design experiments succeed and some fail. And there are efforts to ensure that wind farms use the ocean to overcome opposition from others and be good neighbors.
“We’re going to have some challenges and we’re going to have to roll up our sleeves and figure out how we can solve those problems,” Dagher said. “And I don’t think we as a society have any choice but to do that.”