Offshore Wind Power – Did You Know from Clidemy
?? ???????? ???? ??? ?? ???? ??????????, ??? ????’? ?? ?????? ? ??? ???? ?? ?????
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.
Our specialty focus areas include
Net Zero by Narsi
Insights and interactions on climate action by Narasimhan Santhanam, Director - EAI
View full playlistBut 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 – ?? ???? ???????? & ??????-??? ???? ?? ????????? ????????? ??????? ????????? ?? ? ??????? ?????? ????????? ?? 2030. Help us do that!
See my LinkedIn post on this topic.
