Wind power news and discussions

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Self-assembling crane promises to halve cost of offshore wind setup
By Loz Blain
March 25, 2024

https://newatlas.com/energy/windspider- ... ine-crane/
Part of the exorbitant cost of offshore wind energy is the massive crane ships required to install the damn things – but Norwegian company Windspider has come up with a brilliantly lightweight crane system that promises to slash costs in half.

A new generation of offshore wind turbines is pushing scale to the absolute extremes; colossal towers, taller than some skyscrapers, with gargantuan generator nacelles on top supporting three blades long enough to sweep a diameter greater than 310 metres (1,017 ft)... We're talking about some of the biggest machines humans have ever built.

Lifting those gigantic generators and blades up to the top of the tower is an epic logistical challenge – doing it from a crane ship that's bobbing and floating in the waves puts a hefty bonus multiplier on the difficulty level. And considering that crane ships this big can cost millions a day... Well, you can understand why offshore wind still looks so expensive compared to other renewables.

The solution, according to a few innovative companies, is to more or less make these turbine towers act like their own crane bases. Last year, we looked at a few different "climbing cranes" that are starting to hit the market. You stick down one segment of a tower, then lift the climbing crane up so it can hug onto the side of the tower and lift the next segment on. Then, it shimmies up the next segment and grabs on again, ready to lift the next bit up. You can watch Enercon/Lagerway's LCC140 machine do its very cool thing in the video below.

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Machine learning enables viability of vertical-axis wind turbines
https://techxplore.com/news/2024-04-mac ... -axis.html
by Celia Luterbacher, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

If you imagine an industrial wind turbine, you likely picture the windmill design, technically known as a horizontal-axis wind turbine (HAWT). But the very first wind turbines, which were developed in the Middle East around the 8th century for grinding grain, were vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWT), meaning they spun perpendicular to the wind, rather than parallel.

Due to their slower rotation speed, VAWTs are less noisy than HAWTs and achieve greater wind energy density, meaning they need less space for the same output both on- and off-shore. The blades are also more wildlife-friendly: because they rotate laterally, rather than slicing down from above, they are easier for birds to avoid.

With these advantages, why are VAWTs largely absent from today's wind energy market? As Sébastien Le Fouest, a researcher in the School of Engineering Unsteady Flow Diagnostics Lab ((UNFOLD) explains, it comes down to an engineering problem—air flow control—that he believes can be solved with a combination of sensor technology and machine learning.

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World's biggest floating offshore wind farm gets go-ahead off coast of Aberdeenshire

11:46, 22 APR 2024

The world's largest offshore floating wind farm is set to be constructed off the coast of Peterhead, following approval for the project.

Once operational, Green Volt will feature up to 35 floating turbines and generate 560 megawatts of energy off the coast of Aberdeenshire.

The energy produced will supply offshore oil and gas platforms, while also being connected to the UK grid. This dwarfs the current largest development off the coast of Norway, which has only 11 turbines and produces around 88 megawatts of energy.

The project, part of Crown Estate Scotland's Innovation and Target Oil and Gas leasing round, was lauded as "great news" by First Minister Humza Yousaf.

He stated: "Scotland is one of the best places in the world to develop offshore wind and its supply chain, and we are determined to maximise the huge economic opportunity offshore wind can bring."

https://www.aberdeenlive.news/news/aber ... nd-9239097

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Biden administration announces plans for up to 12 lease sales for offshore wind energy

Source: AP

By KEVIN McGILL
Updated 11:49 AM CDT, April 24, 2024

A new five-year schedule to lease federal offshore tracts for wind energy production was announced Wednesday by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, with up to a dozen lease sales anticipated beginning this year and continuing through 2028.

Haaland announced the plan at a conference in New Orleans.

Under the plan outlined Wednesday, which includes some previously announced lease auctions, three of the anticipated sales would be for Gulf of Mexico tracts to be offered this year, in 2025 and in 2027. Central Atlantic area leases would be sold in 2024 and 2026.

Other anticipated sale areas include the Gulf of Maine (2024 and 2028); Oregon waters (2024); an area of the Atlantic known as New York Bight (2027); and California, Hawaii, and an as-yet unspecified U.S. territory (2028).

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/offshore-win ... 6becd4fc74

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