A wind this floats tremendously. It is anyway for what hope German Siemens and Norwegian StatoilHydro, that is going to instal a floating turbine, by two hundred metres of bottom, next year, off Norway.

The turbine, of a maximum power of 2,3 megawatts, will be fixed to sixty-five metres above the water on a cylindrical buoy of hundred metres, kept by three chains in the bottom of the sea. Group will weigh the 5300 ton trifle …

Lack of available place, growing protest of the residents, irregular winds, the wind are getting worse and worse to become established in earth. Where from the idea of establishing them in sea, with more favourable winds. Until now, the offshore farms are installed by weak depth and pylons fixed by ten-twenty metre of bottom with big concrete blocks. The technology developed by Statoilhydro and Siemens would allow to establish wind up to seven hundred-metre depths.

The track developed by both industrialists does not lack advantages. Other experiments for the open sea, lean on the installation of the wind on floating decks. The germano-Norwegian duet bets standards to him on the use of elements (floats and anchors of decks of oil boring, wind turbine of big series, etc.) to reduce costs. Naturally, electricity will always be more expensive than that produced in earth and in weak distance of coasts. But technique opens new markets, as in California which, in spite of its taste for green energies, does not have marine funds of weak depth.

Picture: wind of the Earth © Denis Delbecq