Offshore Wind Power – Did You Know from Clidemy
𝘐𝘧 𝘰𝘧𝘧𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘴𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘢𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘴, 𝘸𝘩𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯’𝘵 𝘸𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘵 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮?
Wind energy, it appears, has been used forever. The 16th century Spanish writer Cervantes’ famous knight-errant Don Quixote had even popularized the term “tilting at windmills”!
Wind turbines and electricity from are relatively more recent, but wind based power has been around since late 19th century, so this is over 130 years old!
In fact, I would be surprised if any of you had not seen wind turbines sometime in your lifetime.
But all these are onshore wind turbines.
Of far more recent origin are offshore wind turbines – putting the same machines in the sea!
Why would someone bother to do this, as if running a wind turbine on land weren’t difficult enough?
Because of the following reasons:
1. A Megawatt (MW) of wind turbine in the ocean can produce 60-70% higher electricity compared to that on land, because simply put, there is a lot more wind in the oceans than on land – specifically, winds at higher speeds and greater consistency!
2. Aesthetic challenges (not in my backyard!) and noise challenges from wind turbines are minimal for offshore wind turbines. Other human interference challenges (finding the right land, pulling power from the wind turbine to a substation that pass over human settlements…) are also minimized.
3. Finally, there is a huge amount of space to put up wind farms in the oceans – they after all cover 71% of all earth’s surface!
So, why aren’t we seeing many, many, many more offshore wind farms?
Three main reasons:
1. They are expensive to build and maintain. Power from offshore wind is significantly more expensive than that from onshore
2. Offshore wind farms can cause significant harm to the marine ecosystem and the living beings in this ecosystem
3. Offshore wind turbines built near coastlines can still be a bit of an eyesore
At CliDemy – the Climate Academy – 𝘸𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘵 & 𝘮𝘰𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘵-𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘢𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘭𝘪𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘦𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘢 𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥𝘸𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘣𝘺 2030. Help us do that!
See my LinkedIn post on this topic.
