February 23rd, 2009
Offshore wind, a new tack
Courtesy: Principle Power.
An American company is working with a utility company in Portugal to build an offshore wind farm. That’s not the news. The real news is that these turbines will be on floating platforms, not attached to the ocean floor. Principle Power (PP) is the American firm making the floats. The Seattle-based firm is also floating the idea of offshore floats along its own Pacific Coast.. They now have an agreement with Tillamook County, Oregon, for a project there.
PP claims three advantages for their floats vs. tied-to-the-floor offshore turbines: 1) its stability provides negligible pitch and yaw, 2) onshore assembly, 3) shallow draft allows for site flexibility.
I’ve previously blogged about Portugal’s drive to become energy independent through renewable sources. It has almost no fossil fuels of its own.
Emerging Energy Research sees a slowdown in wind energy development in Europe and North America in the coming months. However, EER says China will continue to move ahead with major development and will be the world’s leading wind energy player.
A newsman since 1969, Harry Fuller has worked for CBS, ABC, CNBC Europe, CNET and was founding news director at TechTV. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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