Integrity Score 4442
No Records Found
No Records Found
😲
Six innovative ways to float skyscraper-sized wind turbines
By Emma C. Edwards, University of Oxford
Yes, you read that right – float. You may have seen a wind turbine in the sea before, but chances are you were looking at a “fixed” turbine – that is, one that sits on top of a foundation drilled into the seabed. For the new frontier of offshore wind power, the focus is on floating wind turbines. In this case, the turbines are supported by floating structures that bob and sway in response to waves and wind and are moored with chains and anchored to the seafloor.
This is becoming the focus of the sector for the simple reason that most wind blows above deep water, where building fixed platforms would be too expensive or simply impossible. Designing these new floating platforms is a true engineering challenge, and is a focus of my academic research.
These wind turbines are enormous, reaching up to 240m tall – about the size of a skyscraper. Since they are so tall, strong winds far above the sea surface tend to make the turbine want to tilt, so platform designs focus on minimising this tilt while still being cost-competitive with other forms of energy.
There are more than 100 ideas for platform designs, but we can broadly group them into the following six categories:
1. Spar
Spars are narrow, deep platforms with weight added to the bottom to counteract the wind force (this is called “ballast”). They are usually relatively easy to make because they normally consist of just one cylinder.
However, they can extend 100 metres or more underwater, which means they can’t be deployed in normal docks which are not deep enough. Specialist installation procedures are required to install the turbine once the platform has been towed into deep water.
2. Barge
Barges are wide, shallow platforms that use buoyancy far from the centre of the structure to counteract the wind force on the tower. As they usually extend less than 10 metres underwater, they do not need any specialist deep-water docks or installation vessels.
Read Full Story https://theconversation.com/six-innovative-ways-to-float-skyscraper-sized-wind-turbines-225488m