Offshore Wind

Oil giant Shell is planning the biggest wind-to-hydrogen project in Europe, a colossal 10-gigawatt offshore wind farm in the North Sea feeding a massive electrolysis plant on dry land that'll pump out a million tonnes of clean H2 a year by 2040.

America's first "commercial scale" offshore wind energy project has decided to use GE's colossal Haliade-X turbines, the world's largest. Standing as tall as an 85-story building, with 722-foot rotors, each one is a 12-13 MW generator.

As renewable energy grows in popularity around the world, efforts to cut costs and increase its appeal in every way possible continue, and a bug-inspired six-legged robot may have an important part to play in this.

A study by the University of Maryland indicates that new offshore wind farms being constructed on the Delaware-Maryland-Virginia coastal shelf could become a stopover spot for migrating Atlantic salmon and striped bass.

The waters surrounding the UK have long played home to some of the world's most ambitious renewable energy projects, and they are set to welcome another with construction now underway at Dogger Bank, the world's largest off-shore wind farm to be.

​Last month, GE unveiled its plan to build the world's largest, most powerful offshore wind turbine, known as the Haliade-X. This Tuesday, it was announced that the rig will be tested and developed over the next five years, at the UK’s Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult research center.

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.

A new study has found that wind speeds over the oceans could allow offshore turbines to generate far more energy than a land-based wind farm – with the North Atlantic, in particular, theoretically able to provide enough energy for all of human civilization.

One of the biggest offshore wind farms in the world has just started turning in the North Sea, off the coast of the Netherlands. Hidden over the horizon, the Gemini wind farm isn't visible from the mainland or the neighboring islands, and is set to produce about 2.6 TWh of electricity every year.

A V164 offshore wind turbine from MHI Vestas Offshore Wind has produced almost 216,000 kWh over a 24-hour period during tests at its site near Østerild, Denmark​ in December. In doing so, the ​9 MW prototype takes the energy generation record for a commercially available offshore wind turbine.​

​Wind farmers may soon be using swarms of drones to solve the headache of downstream wind turbulence and identify the most efficient places to plant wind turbines, thanks to a team of researchers from Switzerland.

Hitachi has developed an offshore wind turbine to milk more power from light-wind locations. The 5MW turbine features a rotor sweep diameter of 136m (446 feet), 15 percent greater than the previous model from the company, suited for areas with average annual wind speeds under 7.5 m/sec (16.7 mph).