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Offshore windmills hold clean-energy promise
"The most prolific minds in the renewable energy business are talking about taking land-based wind and dragging that power out to the coast, which really doesn't make much sense," said Jon Bonanno, the company's president. "It makes much more sense to generate that power from deepwater sources and transmit it to the coast." ...Offshore wind farms have been used for years in Europe. But those windmills sit in shallow water, their bases bolted into the ocean floor. Wind farms proposed for the U.S. East Coast, including the contentious Cape Wind project off Massachusetts, take the same approach.
August 3, 2009
by David R. Baker
in San Francisco Chronicle
Someday decades from now, California's sprawling coastal cities could draw their power from floating windmills that bob on the sea like buoys, far from shore.
Their blades would spin over deep ocean water, turning in winds that are steadier and stronger than they are on land. Undersea cables would send their electricity to shore.
This kind of floating windmill has not yet been deployed en masse. But a model of one sits in the Berkeley office of Principle Power, one of several companies trying to tap the powerful winds at sea.
Principle has signed agreements with utilities to test its device, called... [continue via Web link]
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