Deep Ocean Floating Wind Turbines. How do they do that?

Offshore wind turbines powered almost 40% of all the UK's homes in 2020. The International Energy Agency says there's enough potential accessible energy out there to power all of Europe, the US and Japan several times over. But to get at all of it, developers will have to go out into the very deep waters of the open oceans and find a way to make their turbines float safely and securely in all weather conditions. So how on earth are they going to do that?

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zentouro:

Climate Adam:

Kurtis Baute:

Levi Hildebrand:

Simon Clark:

Sarah Karvner:

Jack Harries:

Our Changing Climate :

Research Links

BBC Article

Hywind

Kincardine

GE Article

Orsted Report

World Forum Offshore Wind report

Wind Europe report

[JustHaveaThink]

Just to clarify - if you do ever see an actual Griffin flying around off the coast of your country - make sure you film it and call your local TV network. You could make a lot of money!!! Sorry about that oversight in the script folks. Must have been a translation failing between Danish and English :-)

[behr]

As always, for my money, I find _Just Have a Think_ to be one of the best sites for coverage of the renewable energy scene. One of the best informed/best information, definitely best presentation, with accuracy, clarity, no frills, no bells and whistles, no distractive, superfluous crap, no bullshit. Keep it up JHAT!

[petsit-rachelb]

I literally never comment on videos, I'm such a science geek, and I genuinely look forward to every single video you put out! This s*** is important!

[HerreNeas]

Kudos to a man who can describe industrial use for floaters with a straight face. 😆

[genieb]

Well done, well said. My experience of 35 yrs is in the offshore industry and in particular offshore T&I (transport and installation). There are no technological "issues" (that I can see) for deep water floating wind turbines. The technology exists and it is the production capacity and funding that need to be developed. The service side of it, already exists thanks to the shallow water wind farms, it just needs to scale up (larger SOVs or Service Operation Vessels) so that the R&M teams can remain offshore for extended periods of time (like with the bigger offshore construction vessel in the O&G). What is interesting, I see a major opportunity for the T&I side to cut cost. Although I love the big crane vessels (I used to work the best in the world, Heerema), I think there is an opportunity to rely less on those big and expensive vessels and develop more cost effective methods (thanks to the economies of scale). The same goes for the installation of the subsea infrastructure (cables in particular), there is room for improvement there as well. In short, I think deep water offshore wind has a great future that we'll see develop further in the next decade(s).

[Chrisarndtyoutubable]

Recently started watching this channel and I'm a fan, but I think this video manages to miss perhaps the critical reason to be bullish about offshore wind: The power generated from a turbine approximates the SQUARE of a turbine blade's length (or radius of the swept area). Onshore blades can only be so big because they need to be transported via roads, but an offshore blade built at or near a port has no such constraint as it can be transported via barge to the open ocean. Thus as the offshore blades increase in size, their output grows in a non-linear way setting up the opportunity to leverage a fixed (or, as the industry scales, evening declining) cost of mooring these behemoths to the ocean bottom. Thus, it's not just the potential energy to be harnessed, which is indeed very, very large, it's the opportunity that costs may decline much faster than current expectations as turbine sizes continue to increase.

[iainmackenzieUK]

Create a 'field' of floating wind turbines surrounded by a 'fence' or wall of wave-powered generators which absorb/ reduce the wave energy incident upon the wind turbines.

[aletheiai]

8:11 "... team refers to as 'floaters' --- which is unfortunate".
Gotta love the British sense-of-humor.

[peterkoolwijk]

Use less energy is another good option. Otherwise can't just do anything else then marvel at the great ingenuity people have at their capacity, and if we would just be willing to pay what it cost to keep this planet, with us on it, for another few hundred years we wouldn't have to scrimp and save to compete with oils. I gladly pay more for that certainty. Thank you for the great inspiring channel!

[Doran.]

This is a PHENOMENAL summary of the burgeoning floating offshore wind industry! Thank you so much!

[tommcallister]

It is hard to believe that a relatively short number of years ago smoking was permitted in airplanes and restaurants. Today, that would be unthinkable. Let us all hope that developments in renewable energy lead to a similar disruption of what is ‘normal’ in terms of the acceptability of fossil fuel driven energy production.

[k-pax]

Good on Daniel Turdiman to come up with his amazing floaters

[robertlackey]

As someone that spent 10 years working on a boat, I am very impressed !

[ndperson]

Floating wind turbines combined with utilizing wave energy would be really cool. Plus one could use compressed air underwater for energy storage. Combining multiple sources of renewable energy in the same place just seems like a natural progression

[anthonycain]

Love the floating model at the start of program. Well presented and informative.Many thanks

[clavo]

I'm an inventor; have a patent in this area and I've worked on a vertical axis wind turbine in S. Texas . I'm a fan of gyroscopes and I believe a solid gyroscope disc at the base of a deep sea turbine would stabilize it and also provide some flywheel energy steadying effect. The gyroscope being solid will minimize the drag of the water on the disc and the disc will need to be a substantial fraction of the diameter of the blades. It may be that two or more discs are required. They can be made of concrete filled fiberglass and spun via friction drive planetary wheels. They'll need some kind of electrical charge or something to keep the barnacles off.. I think. anti-torque disc will also be required.

[grinpick]

Your diction, phrasing and grammar are invariably perfect - almost. Which is probably why I noticed "economy of scales" where I expected "economies of scale." Sorry to nitpick. Love your videos.

[AngelMarin]

An added benefit is that they function as sanctuaries for marine life. Only park staff can enter the area and the fixings act as natural reefs

[Beckisphere]

Offshore wind is bae and US needs to get on it faster. I'm glad we're finally adding some new projects.

[penguinuprighter]

"called floaters..which is unfortunate" haha always a funny quip. Great video Dave. These are hopeful projects. Glad that talented people are doing this work.