Floating Offshore Wind Turbines Could Drive Japan’s Renewable Energy Future

Chris Rose 
November 18, 2013 

Less than three years after the disaster at a nuclear power plant in Fukushima, a hotly-anticipated floating offshore wind turbine began operating 20 kilometres from the damaged site on Monday.

A number of news organisations reported that Yuhei Sato, governor of Fukushima, said that the floating turbine could become a symbol of the region’s desire to become a green energy centre.

Photo credit: fukushima-forward.jp

“Fukushima is making a stride toward the future step by step,” Bloomberg quoted Sato saying at a ceremony marking the project’s initiation. “Floating offshore wind is a symbol of such a future.”

The experimental project is funded by the government and led by Marubeni Corp. It requires approval from local fishermen before becoming a commercial operation. The 2-megawatt turbine from Hitachi Ltd. was nicknamed “Fukushima Mirai,” the Bloomberg report said, adding a floating substation has also been set up and bears the name “Fukushima Kizuna.” Mirai means future, while kizuna translates as ties.

Two more turbines by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd., with 7 MW of capacity each, are expected to also be installed. Bloomberg noted the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry has said the floating offshore capacity may be expanded to 1,000 MW.

Offshore wind industry will become €130bn annual market by 2020

By Silvio Marcacci on 9 May 2013

Offshore wind power may yet not match the overall strength of onshore wind, but the industry is on course grow rapidly to become an €130 billion global market by 2020.CleanTechnica

Global offshore wind market image via Roland Berger

A new report from industry consultants Roland Berger, “Offshore Wind Toward 2020,” concludes a combination of industry trends will soon make offshore wind cost competitive with other generation sources in many markets.

Europe is expected to continue dominating the global offshore wind industry, but the Asia Pacific and North American regions will soon represent significant market shares as technological innovation reduce many bottlenecks that have stymied project development to date.

Europe Continues To Dominate Global Markets

New turbines are expected to sprout from seas across the globe, but Europe will lead the charge, buoyed by ambitious national policy goals in multiple countries. The European Union has set 2020 targets of 35% electricity from renewables, with a 12% carve out for wind and 40 gigawatts (GW) installed offshore capacity.

So far, those targets have helped build 5GW offshore wind capacity, with new installations exceeding more than one offshore turbine per business day in 2012, equivalent to 10% of Europe’s annual wind energy installations. In many cases, actual generation from wind farms has exceeded expectations.

But current offshore output will be swamped by future additions – by 2020 reaching 4.5GW of new annual offshore wind capacity additions, worth more than €14 billion per year. Those estimates would more than triple annual capacity additions and double total investments for 2013, currently at 1.8GW and €7 billion respectively.

Japan and Google add their puff to offshore wind

By Bloomberg New Energy Finance on 23 January 2013

German grid operator TenneT breathed a sigh of relief last week, announcing that Mitsubishi Corporation, Japan’s largest trading house by market value, would invest EUR 576m (USD 769m) to help connect sea-based wind farms to the power grid. The operator is under pressure to catch up with deferred grid connections in the German North Sea and seeks to prevent additional delays. Utilities including RWE and E.ON threatened to halt investment there because of interruptions.Offshore wind was the centre of attention in the clean energy sector last week, with an investment by a Japanese corporation in the North Sea, plans for a giant project in Japan’s own waters, and the participation of Google in a US interconnection venture.

Mitsubishi will pay EUR 240m for a 49% stake in the BorWin1 and BorWin2 grid connection projects, and EUR 336m for a 49% stake in HelWin2 and DolWin2, TenneT said 16 January in a statement. Total investment in all four projects will be EUR 2.9bn (USD 3.9bn), with an equity share of about 40%, TenneT said.

Germany wants to add 25GW of sea-based wind turbines by 2030. Europe’s biggest economy is investing in clean energy as it phases out nuclear power. It decided to close all of its atomic power facilities by 2022 in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan nearly two years ago.

Japan shut down its 54 nuclear reactors after a tsunami triggered a meltdown at the Daiichi plant in March 2011. Only two reactors have come back online since.

The loss of nuclear capacity has created an opening for more renewable sources in Japan. Indeed, the New Scientist reported last week that Japan is preparing to build the world’s largest offshore wind farm, starting this July. The plan, as the magazine reported, would see 143 wind turbines built on platforms 16km off the coast of – out of all places – Fukushima by 2020. The farm would generate 1GW of power once completed. No information has yet emerged on financing of the project – an omission that puts a question mark over its supposed schedule.

Testing the Waters: Gaining Public Support for Offshore Wind

By Ysabel Yates, Contributor
October 16, 2012   

 

The coastlines of the U.S. are brimming with potential for offshore wind development, yet every turbine is on land. Why isn't this coastal goldmine of clean energy and jobs being tapped? According to a new study, the impediment isn't technological, it's social.

Offshore wind would be a major boost to an already robust industry. U.S. coastlines are highly populated and windier than their land counterparts. There are also no technological barriers to offshore wind; it has been a reality in Europe for years.

While public acceptance isn’t the only hurdle facing U.S. offshore wind power (policy and permits also contribute), public opposition can delay, or even derail, a planned project.

In a recent study at the University of Delaware, researchers mapped public perceptions of offshore wind projects in order to uncover the factors that make — or break — public support.

The research, which is ongoing, involves polling residents in two areas with proposed offshore wind projects, Cape Wind off Massachusetts and Bluewater Wind off Delaware.

South Carolina Offshore Wind Farm Could Produce Thousands of Jobs, Billions in Wages and Government Revenue

Besides producing a massive amount of clean, renewable power for local and regional use, building an offshore wind farm off the South Carolina coast could produce thousands of green jobs and millions of dollars in wages and state and local government revenues, according to a study by Clemson University’s Restoration Institute and Strom Thurmond Institute of Government and Public Affairs.

A 1,000-megawatt (MW) offshore wind farm built off South Carolina’s coast would create an average of more than 3,900 jobs per year during its 10-year construction period and over $2 billion in wages from 2016 to 2030, according to the new report. In addition, it would add some $620 million to state and local government revenue per year over its 10-year construction period. Entitled “S.C. Wind Energy Supply Chain Survey and Offshore Wind Economic Impact Study,” the research was prepared for the S.C. Energy Office.

Clean Technica (http://s.tt/1psc6)

Offshore wind potential is huge: studies by Craig Miller

Climate Central

The US has lagged behind European countries in capturing offshore wind for electricity, but a spate of recent studies suggest that a bigger push might be in order.

The latest, from Stanford civil & environmental engineer Mark Jacobson concludes that offshore areas of the East Coast alone have enough moving air to meet a third of the entire nation’s energy needs.

Running out the string quite a bit further, studies from Stanford and Lawrence Livermore National Lab point to a breezy bounty offshore and at higher altitudes that could theoretically power the planet, perhaps as soon as 2030.

The US has lagged behind other developed countries in capturing offshore wind for electricity.
Credit: NC State University.    

Of course, that would take four million powerful turbines.

“If we put half over the ocean and half over land, we’d need about 0.6 percent of the world’s land for turbines,” Jacobson told listeners to KQED’s Forum program this week. “But all of that land, almost, is open space between the turbines, that can be used for multiple purposes, including rangeland, cropland, pasture land or just plain open space. The rest is over the water.”

Floating the idea of a platform for turbines

The hexagonal floating platform could hold six or seven large turbines and reduce maintenance and installation costs

Sweden’s Hexicon has developed a new solution for offshore wind — a floating platform that can accommodate six or seven large turbines with a total capacity of 25–40 megawatts (MW).

“Many cities around the world can get a substantial portion of their electricity from a 30MW platform without massive investment in the onshore grid”

The turbines will be operated and controlled from a hub in the centre of the platform. The installation will be anchored to the seabed but turn on its own axis — allowing it to turn into the wind for the best performance.

The concept has important advantages for offshore wind, says Percy Sundquist, business development manager at Hexicon, part of the Fagerdala group.

Sundquist says: “We are sure we can construct a platform like this at the same cost per installed MW as at offshore wind farms now being built at 20–30 metres’ depth in the North Sea.”The gap between turbines will be sufficient to avoid turbulence from one affecting the others.Hexicon has several advantages over traditional offshore wind farm designs, says Sundquist. These include:lower maintenance costs, because turbines are more easily accessible and platforms can be combined; the platform can operate for 50–60 years, with the turbines replaced as more efficient models become available

Floating turbine buoys offshore wind potential

By Eoghan Macguire, for CNN

June 28, 2012 -- Updated 0928 GMT (1728 HKT)

A floating wind turbine has been inaugurated off the coast of Agucadoura, Portugal.

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Floating turbine tested in Portugal

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• A floating wind turbine has been inaugurated off the coast of Agucadoura, Portugal
• The 54-meter tall structure can produce enough energy to power 1,300 households
• The consortium behind the turbine hope to install five more devices to create the world's first ever floating wind farm

(CNN) -- Floating wind farms could soon be powering thousands of European homes after a prototype seaborne turbine sailed through technological trials off the coast of Agucadoura, Portugal.

The 54-meter tall renewable structure sits atop a semi-submersible platform known as a WindFloat situated five kilometers from shore.

It has been manufactured by WindPlus, a consortium of energy and clean-tech companies including Principle Power, Energias de Portugal and Vestas.

The group hopes their primary success will help secure European Union funding to add another five turbines alongside the existing model, engendering greater electrical production.

"The (initial) turbine is capable of producing 2MW (megawatts) instantaneously at any one time, given enough wind," says Alla Weinstein, CEO of Principal Power.

"This is equivalent to 1,300 households. The cumulative production thus far in Portugal has been 1.7GWh (gigawatt hours)," she adds.

Offshore wind power generation in the spotlight in Japan

By TOMOYA FUJITA/ Staff Writer

As the government seeks to move away from nuclear energy, wind power in Japan has seen a surge in popularity, with a growing number of power utilities and heavy industrial manufacturers starting offshore turbine construction projects.

The Environment Ministry announced that it aims to increase Japan's offshore wind power generation to 8.03 million kilowatts, equal to the amount of electricity generated by eight nuclear power reactors, by 2030, and projects for new or expanded wind farms are already under way around the country.

Fifty meters off the coast of Kamisu, in Ibaraki Prefecture, the company Windpower operates seven 2,000-kilowatt wind turbines jointly developed by Hitachi Ltd. and Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd. The two companies plan to increase the number of turbines to 15 by the end of 2012, bringing the total output to 30,000 kilowatts.

Tokyo Electric Power Co., operator of the crippled Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, plans to purchase electricity created there at up to 23 yen ($0.3) per kilowatt-hour.

How offshore wind can power New York and Boston


Posted on September 16, 2012 - 09:37 by Pete Danko, EarthTechling

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There is one thing most people probably don't know about offshore wind.



Unlike land-based wind, which tends to blow strongest at night and in the early morning hours — when energy demand is low — offshore wind usually peaks during the day, when demand is highest.

Just one more reason, argue Stanford University scientists in a new paper [PDF], to get to work on reaping the vast bounty of power off the East Coast of the United States.

And we do mean vast.

The Stanford team determined that after taking into account typical transmission losses and inefficiencies common to offshore turbine arrays, "the U.S. East Coast offshore winds were found to produce from 965 to 1,372 terawatt hours of electricity annually, enough to satisfy the demands of one-third of the United States, or all of the East Coast, from Florida to Maine," according to a Stanford release.

The bulk of the East Coast wind resource is found from Virginia north – a good thing, since that portion of the coast is far less likely to face devastating hurricanes. The researchers say that turbines can withstand category 3 hurricanes, and nothing beyond that strength hit the Virginia-to-Maine zone from 1851 to 2006.

So how many turbines would it take to power the East Coast? Oh, just 140,000 5-megawatt turbines, the researchers say.

Oceans of opportunity

Europe's offshore wind potential is enormous and able to meet Europe’s demand seven times over.

Offshore wind deployment is foreseen to expand dramatically in the years to come. This expansion is strongly driven by EU and national policies that aim to provide a much greater penetration of renewable energy sources.

Political certainty is key to move from a pioneering phase to large scale offshore wind development. The European Commission, by considering a 2030 renewable energy target as an intermediate target towards 2050, should provide the wind industry with the certainty it deserves.

Huge developer interest

The European Commission anticipated, in its 2008 Communication on offshore wind energy (EC, 2008) that “offshore wind can and must make a substantial contribution to meeting the EU’s energy policy objectives through a very significant increase - in the order of 30-40 times by 2020 and 100 times by 2030 - in installed capacity compared to today.”

150 GW of offshore wind projects are already in various stages of planning.

A total of 1,503 offshore turbines are now installed and grid connected in European waters, bringing total installed capacity to 4,336MW, spread across 56 wind farms in ten European countries.

In the first six months of 2012, 132 new offshore wind turbines, totalling 523,2MW were fully grid connected (up 175MW or 50% compared to the same period last year). Overall 13 offshore wind farms were under construction during the period. Once completed, they will represent a total installed capacity of 3,762MW.

Offshore Wind Energy

Commercial-scale offshore wind facilities are currently in operation in shallow waters off the coasts of Europe, but further technology development is needed for use in the deeper waters of the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS).

	Wind Facility, Sweden. © GE Energy

Wind is air in motion. Since the earth’s surface is made of various land and water formations, it absorbs the sun’s radiation unevenly. Wind is produced by the uneven heating of the earth’s surface by the sun.

Onshore, wind energy has been utilized for power generation for more than two thousand years. In modern times, wind energy is mainly used to generate electricity, primarily through the use ofwind turbines. Wind flows over the airfoil-shaped blades of wind turbines, causing lift (similar to the lifting force on airplane wings), causing the turbine blades to turn. The blades are connected to a drive shaft that turns an electric generator to produce electricity.

Offshore Wind Energy Resources

Offshore wind turbines are being used in a number of countries to harness the energy of the moving air over the oceans and convert it to electricity. Offshore winds tend to flow at higher speeds than onshore winds, thus allowing turbines to produce more electricity. Much of this potential energy is near major population (and energy load) centers where energy costs are high and land-based wind development opportunities are limited.

Because the potential energy produced from the wind is directly proportional to the cube of the wind speed, increased wind speeds of only a few miles per hour can produce a significantly larger amount of electricity. For instance, a turbine at a site with an average wind speed of 16 mph would produce 50% more electricity than at a site with the same turbine and average wind speeds of 14 mph.