Titanic's floating wind turbine size quantified – did the watts increase?

from CFACT

David Wojik

My regular readers know that I often refer to giant floating wind turbine components. They are much larger than stationary offshore wind turbine components because there is a large float attached. This makes floating wind much more expensive than fixed wind, which is already much more expensive than reliable oil-fired power.

Simple physics says that if you want to put a 2,000-ton generator on top of a 500-foot tower and attach three 300-foot wings to the boat, and have it still stand in hurricane-force winds If it doesn't fall, then it must be a powerful ship.

Happily, Philip Lewis of strategist Intelatus over at Offshore Engineer has put some numbers on this nonsense.

See https://www.oedigital.com/news/504812-addressing-the-challenges-of-developing-floating-wind-at-scale

and https://www.oedigital.com/news/514835-preparing-for-floating-wind-leveraging-the-oil-gas-supply-chain

Of course, these are only estimates based on the proposed design, not measurements. Remember, no one anywhere built one of these Titanic monsters. Governments are setting huge goals for a technology that doesn’t yet exist.

Based on the UK permit application, we are considering building a huge individual float covering approximately 160,000 square feet. It's about the size of three football fields and is a giant float. The UK also experienced no hurricane-level winds. Maybe 100 mph, but definitely not 160 mph.

In terms of weight, Lewis recommends using up to 5,000 tons of steel or 20,000 tons of concrete per float. Note that a 5,000 ton steel float cannot hold a 2,000 ton float on a tall pole upright. These designs are so-called “semi-submersibles.” This means that the Titanic's buoys were approximately half filled with water. There's enough air to float it, but plenty of water to sink it. I haven't seen the math of it all and doubt its feasibility, but that's what's been reported.

Of course, these huge floating objects make floating wind power extremely expensive. That guess is at least three times more expensive than fixed-bottom offshore wind, which is already ridiculously expensive. There could be more.

These huge figures are based on a 15 MW turbine, which is the largest turbine built today, although it has not yet been installed and operated offshore. But bigger orders are coming, with 18 MW of capacity ordered and 20 MW of capacity advertised. The size and weight of the float scale exponentially with the weight and height of the turbine, so the huge numbers above may actually be quite small.

As an engineer I would build some of these monster floating assemblies and put them through a few hurricanes to see how they performed and especially if they survived. Of course, die-hard Biden and green states didn’t do that.

Next month, for example, Biden's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management will sell 15,000 megawatts of floating wind leases in the Gulf of Maine. California just announced a floating wind power target of 25,000 MW, 5,000 MW of which is already leased by BOEM.

Just looking at the numbers, the 40,000 MW of buoys would require less than 3,000 15 MW giant buoys. In addition to filling a large amount of ocean surface, each mooring must also be anchored to the seafloor with at least three mooring lines, more likely around eight each. Additionally, each has a live cable transmitting its energy output.

Lewis says the depth involved is this: “In the United States, the first commercial-scale projects will be near California (500-1,300 metres). Future activities are planned in Oregon (550-1,500 metres), Myanmar One mile is approximately 1,600 meters in the Gulf (190-300 meters) and Mid-Atlantic (over 2,000 meters).

So we have millions of feet of mooring cables and hot wires filling the ocean between the buoys and the seafloor. This is a new form of harassment that requires authorization (or lack thereof) under the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

What’s really interesting is that I don’t see plans to build these thousands of Titanic floating wind components. I recently pointed out that the Biden Department of Transportation illegally diverted nearly a billion dollars to build floating wind facilities in Maine and California. However, neither facility was designed with the conditions required to actually build such a massive semi-submersible junk ship from a dry dock.

I strongly recommend that we put leasing and financing of floating wind technology on hold in a big way. Let’s first look at how it works, if it works, and how much it costs.

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