Offshore Wind

​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).

The UK Secretary of State for Energy has given approval for what will be the biggest offshore windfarm in the world. Hornsea Project Two is the second site of the Hornsea offshore project and will comprise up to 300 turbines with a total capacity of up to 1.8 GW.

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.

Sandia National Laboratories has revealed its plans for the extreme-scale Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotor (SUMR). The turbines are built to deal with the extreme conditions of an offshore farm, featuring a folding build to cope with high winds.

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.

Offshore wind farms have been creating electricity off the coast of Denmark since 1991. It's a different story in the US, where until recently there were no offshore wind farms in operation or even under construction.