Engineers look to make offshore wind more efficient

Fuel Fix:

Wind farms blanket the western half of Texas, turbine blades spinning across the Panhandle and Permian Basin, making the state the nation’s leader in generating electricity from wind.

But for most of the country, the greatest potential for wind energy lies offshore. Developers are pushing ahead withprojects on the East Coast and elsewhere despite environmental concerns about fishing habitats, migratory bird paths and even the seaside views valued by tourists and coastal residents alike.

This activity is largely driven by requirements for utilities to include a certain percentage of electricity from renewable sources. Beyond the environment, permitting and other concerns, investors also struggle with the high cost of offshore wind developments.

Now research by an engineer at Texas A&M University at Galveston aims to make the turbines less expensive and allow them to be moved farther from shore, reducing complaints about visual blight.

“Wind energy profits are razor thin,” said Bert Sweetman, associate professor of maritime systems engineering at A&M-Galveston. “Cost has to be a bigger issue than when you’re building an oil platform.”

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Although his work is still based on mathematical models, he said he’s confident it will result in savings.

Sweetman estimated that various design possibilities would cut the amount of steel required by 30 percent.

Like other offshore wind turbine designs, these would be tethered to the seabed. A cable to carry the current generated would also run to the sea floor and on to an onshore power station.

Wind energy is well established in Texas, accounting for 13 percent of generating capacity in 2012, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas reports. Most of that comes from turbines in West Texas, although there are two coastal wind farms, both in Kenedy County south of Corpus Christi.

Andy Lubershare, senior analyst with IHS Emerging Energy Research, said many states don’t have Texas’ “phenomenal wind onshore.”

Densely populated areas in some states, especially in the Northeast, make building wind farms inland even more difficult.

“Offshore might have an advantage in New England and the Mid-Atlantic,” he said, and that area is expected to be the first where offshore wind developments come online.

Still, it’s expensive. Although Europe has a number of commercial offshore wind developments in operation, none have begun in the U.S. and several projects under development in New England face challenges.

Chris Long, manager of offshore wind and siting policy for the American Wind Energy Association, said offshore winds tend to blow when energy demand is greatest.

“On that hot summer afternoon, the temperature differential between land and sea creates the sea breeze,” he said. “Just as everyone is cranking up their air conditioning, that’s one of the times the sea breeze is greatest.”
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The wind tends to blow hardest in the hot afternoon and into the early evening.  But the reason the margins in wind energy are so slim is because they are still not very efficient or dependable in terms of a source.  The question is whether these so called "renewable" sources can have an energy payback within the lifetime of the equipment they use.  At this point I am dubious.  The offshore environment can also be hostile corroding the lighter weight steel.  There is also the issue of how they will hold up to hurricane force winds.