Tight Competition for Building the World’s Biggest Offshore Wind Turbines
26 July 2010 | Wind Power | No Comments
Is human nature to want more than you have at a given time. We will never have enough money, reputation or success! We always want more! Same thing happened with British, American and Norwegian engineers. They are striving to build a giant wind turbine (Some people could call it “the holy grail of wind turbines”), twice the power and size of anything seen before. The engineers are in a race to design the world’s biggest offshore wind turbines which will generate over 10MW green power.
After many hours of hard work british engineers have found their best solutions to create this giant wind turbine. They chose different designs but in the end they made the turbine to resemble with a spinning sycamore leaf . Arup firm and other important companies like Rolls Royce, Shell and BP will create a detailed design for the “Aerogenerator”. The first model is expected to be built by the end of 2014.
“There is a wonderful race on. It’s very tight and the prize is domination of the global offshore wind energy market…The UK has come late to the race, but with 40 years of oil and gas experience we have the chance to lead the world. The new [Aero-generator] turbine is based on semi-submersible oil platform technology and does not have the same weight constraints as a normal wind turbine. The radical new design is half the height of an equivalent [conventional] turbine,” said Feargal Brennan, head of offshore engineering at Cranfield University.
“Aero-generator” will be be fixed to the sea bed and it will stand nearly 600ft high above the waves. If all this work will be a success “Aerogenerator” will provide electricity for 5,000-10,000 homes.
But here are not only British engineers in the race. American and Danish companies are planning to build 9MW offshore wind turbines and Norwegian firm Sway is planning to build some huge floating turbines, anchored to the sea bed. I think this is a very tight competition, but whoever wins the victory will be for our planet.
Tags: 10mw offshore, aerogenerator, american wind turbines, biggest offshore wind turbines, british wind turbines, danish wind turbines, floating wind turbines, giant wind turbine, norwegian wind turbines, offshore wind turbines