Floating offshore wind

We haven't seen a floating offshore wind turbine like this before. Touchwind claims its innovative single-blade turbines will solve several problems to drive down cost and downtime, using a single, huge blade with no fancy active pitch controls.

Irish company Gazelle has announced the third generation of a fascinating new floating wind platform design it says can stabiliize massive offshore turbines up to 20 MW in capacity, while radically reducing weight, cost and sea floor cable tension.

Floating wind turbines are crucial to the future of offshore wind, but they require radically different thinking. French company Eolink is building a full-scale pyramid-style floating wind turbine that reduces materials and weight by more than 30%.

Swedish company SeaTwirl says its floating vertical-axis wind turbines have what it takes to dramatically reduce the cost of deep offshore wind energy, and it's signed a deal with Westcon to build and deploy a commercial-scale 1-MW turbine in Norway.

Boston startup T-Omega Wind says it's prototyped and tested a unique floating offshore wind turbine that can withstand massive storms, but at 20% the weight and around 30% the price of conventional designs, unlocking the world's best wind resources.

Norway's World Wide Wind has a radically different take on offshore wind power. These floating, vertical-axis wind turbines feature two sets of blades, tuned to contra-rotate – and they promise more than double the output of today's biggest turbines.

Norway's Wind Catching Systems has made a spectacular debut with a colossal floating wind turbine array it says can generate five times the annual energy of the world's biggest single turbines – while reducing costs to be immediately competitive.

GE is looking to unlock the potential of far offshore wind installations through the development of massive turbines that can operate in deeper waters, using advanced floating platforms to keep them steady as waves crash around them.

German company Sinn Power has proposed a hybrid offshore power generation platform that combines wind turbines, solar panels and wave energy harvesters to generate off-grid electricity for people living close to the coast.

Offshore wind farms can tap into the higher average wind speeds over the ocean, but can only be built in relatively shallow water. Floating turbines can help harvest wind energy from above deeper waters, and now the world’s first floating wind farm has just fired up off the coast of Scotland.

California’s central coast could become the site of the world’s largest working offshore wind farm, a 765-megawatt producer surpassing the 630-megawatt London Array off the coast of Kent. The project would include around 100 wind turbines set on floating platforms 33 miles from shore.

In what is claimed to be the first floating wind farm in the world, five wind turbines with a capacity of six megawatts each will be set on floating structures and located some 15 miles (25 km) off the northeast coast of Scotland.