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Floating wind turbines for offshore use are seen by many as embodying the future of the sector: they circumvent the problem of unsuitable seabeds and may even cost less than grounded alternatives. A consortium working under the FLOATGEN banner is looking for a share of the pie with the first-ever floating wind turbine to be set-up in the Atlantic close to the French coast.
FLOATGEN is looking to pioneer the expected burgeoning of offshore floating wind farms in European waters. To do so, it will set up a 2 MW turbine in the Atlantic Ocean, at the SEM-REV test site located 12 nautical miles from the city of Le Croisic. The seven-strong consortium hopes that this groundbreaking set-up—on a site which features an electrical substation connected to the national grid—will demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of floating-wind turbines and enable their development in windy and deep waters that are currently not commercially viable.
The demonstrator is using a cost-efficient, ring-shaped floating platform patented by Ideol. It boasts novel hydrodynamic properties that, according to its manufacturer, 'make its performance exceptional compared to other floating platforms.'
How long before Brexit Britain seizes the turbines and anchors them off Jersey?
[Editor's Note: Le Croisic is a commune and not a city. The nearest city is Nantes.]
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Wednesday November 30 2016, @12:58PM
I didn't mean to handwave the problem away. Maybe you're right, and Bin Laden did the New Yorkers a favour by blowing up the Twin Towers that blocked so much of New York's wind :-/
I just wanted to see if I could, with high-school physics knowledge (except I've forgotten all about 76 cm Mercury is how many Torricelli etc.), make a first-order approximation of how much of the wind goes through a turbine. Then I secretly hoped that somebody who actually knew about this stuff would stand up and say "you're wrong because..." or "you're right as a first order approximation".
In order to show that windmills cause a cumulative change in the atmosphere or land temperature etc., you'd have to first prove that there is an effect that can be caused by wind turbines and that can be cumulative, and next to find out if it actually happens.
That needs serious research, not just my highschool physics :-) I haven't heard of any permanent or cumulative changes due to wind turbines and they've been around in the Low Countries most of my life. We'd need to ask an actual meteorologist or climate expert or field biologist.