Deepwater Wind

I read a few articles lately about energy created by wind turbines placed in offshore, deep water locations. One article was in Forbes called Deepwater Wind. The other article was in the WSJ called Winds Shift in Energy Debate. It doesn't seem like you can get much cleaner in terms of energy production than wind. But due to problems with the energy grid and transmission capacity, one of the problems with wind turbines is that they need to be close to the markets that will actually consume the energy. For a major city, one of the solutions that has been proposed is to place wind turbines just offshore. The conditions offshore offer consistent, steady wind. But the problem is that the wind turbines obstruct the ocean view.

An excerpt about this from the WSJ:

Because of favorable wind conditions and the relative ease of siting, much of the U.S. construction to date has been in areas far from big population centers. In many cases, transmission systems lack the capacity to move all of the resulting electricity to where it is most needed. "The power can't get to market," says Stow Walker, associate director of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, a consulting concern in Massachusetts.

Building offshore would allow developers to produce electricity closer to big cities, particularly along the East Coast. The downside is that it would also boost construction costs by 30% or more. Erecting turbines within view of pricey coastal real estate also increases the odds of a backlash since a typical utility-grade unit includes a tower nearly as tall as the Statue of Liberty and a rotor roughly as wide as a football field is long.

As a result, there are no offshore wind turbines anywhere in the United States. While Norway currently gets about 20% of its power from wind, we only get about 1.2%. According to the WSJ article, "A recent Energy Department report said wind power could supply 20% of the country's energy needs by 2030." So how do we get there? How do we tap this great potential energy source without disturbing the skyline?

One company in Norway is proposing to build wind turbines twice as far offshore as normal turbines - up to 20 miles out. That would solve the aesthetic issues that people have. But currently those turbines cost $20 million a piece to put up - that's about 4 or 5 times the cost of a near shore or onshore turbine. It'd be interesting to do the math on the return, but I imagine even at that cost it would still be cost-effective in the long-run.

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