Talk:Offshore wind power

Wind turbine inefficiency due to cloud-formation from upstream wind turbines
There is an intriguing photograph, and a discussion of some dynamic inefficiencies that may accrue to offshore wind farms, here: Wind Turbines Leave Clouds and Energy Inefficiency in Their Wake, 2010-01-22. I have not put any of this information into the WP article, but it may be appropriate to do so. Importantly, the linked magazine article provides a link to a more exhaustive reliable secondary source, a book, that might be good reading for any editor interested in the topic, and from which one could obtain verifiable citations for any new assertions added to the Offshore wind power article. Cheers. N2e (talk) 01:31, 25 January 2010 (UTC)
 * A report was made about that photo : http://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/6/2/696/pdf
 * Related links : 1, 2, 3, 4 . TGCP (talk) 20:13, 4 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Links 2 and 4 do not work anymore, and 1 doesn't bring to the intended document anymore. Léon Vaia (talk) 16:54, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Section moved here for discussion
I'm moving the following section here because it is poorly sourced, poorly written, and adds little. Johnfos (talk) 00:32, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Planning and permitting
Important elements:
 * Siting (finding a site with i.e. good wind, proximity to onshore transmission capacity, favorable regulatory regime and the right conditions in terms of water depth, soil conditions etc.)
 * Preliminary technical plan
 * Environmental impact assessment
 * Wind measurement
 * Applications for various permits required by local authorities
 * Communication with the public and stakeholders to ensure support for the plans
 * Predictions of the yield of the plant
 * Financial modelling
 * Financing

In Denmark, many of these phases were deliberately streamlined by authorities in order to minimize hurdles.

In many cases, planning and permitting is done by specialized project development companies that do not intend to own and operate the plant, and that do not have the financial resources to do so. In other cases it is undertaken by utilities or independent power providers ("IPPs").

The planning and permitting phase can cost >$10 million, take 5–7 years and have an uncertain outcome. The industry puts pressure on the governments to improve the processes, and some governments are responding by streamlining them (e.g., UK, Ontario).

Procurement and construction
The owner of the wind farm typically procures:
 * Wind turbines
 * Marine structural elements
 * Foundations -- required for fixed-bottom turbines, but not for floating turbines.
 * Electrical cables (within the farm and to onshore connection point)
 * Offshore Transformer substation(s)

All these items have special requirements for and special challenges in the offshore environment. For instance, turbines are much less accessible when offshore (requiring the use of a service vessel for routine access, and a jackup rig for heavy service such as gearbox replacement), and thus reliability is more important than for an onshore turbine.

Foundations transfer the loads from the turbine into the seabed. Major issues for offshore foundations include the need for special installation vessels and the resultant risk and costs of waiting for weather windows. Technology exists to install without use of offshore crane.

Operations and maintenance
After commissioning of the offshore wind farm, the operations and maintenance phase commences.

A control center uses weather forecasts to predict electricity generation and interfaces with the Transmission system operator to integrate the electricity into the grid. The control center also monitors and controls the individual turbines and other components of the plant.

A maintenance organization performs maintenance and repairs of the components, spending almost all its resources on the turbines. Access to turbines is by helicopter or service access vessel. Some wind farms located far from possible onshore bases have service teams living on site in offshore accommodation units. -- Johnfos (talk) 00:32, 1 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Removing this unsourced material is prudent, but please make the effort of retaining the SOURCED material, either here or in Wind farm. I believe that the removed section contains notable information particular to offshore wind farms (as well as onshore), as permitting and construction is challenging and remains a hurdle for the power supply of the world. This description of the year-long effort is not described elsewhere on WP. Sources for this process may cumbersome to obtain. TGCP (talk) 12:12, 1 January 2011 (UTC)


 * Have added back some sourced material, in the Technology section. Johnfos (talk) 18:41, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Missing any mention of the deep-water floating wind technology
The article is missing any mention of the deep-water floating wind turbine technology that has moved out of the labs, and small-scale tests, to large-scale (>2 MW) deep-water turbines now completing their second year of tests. This oversight should be, it seems to me, be remedied. I will try to get back here in the near future to fix this. N2e (talk) 18:43, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Picture
Minor point, but as the UK has more offshore wind power than the rest of the world combined, shouldn't the page image be of a UK offshore wind farm, like the London Array?! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.6.102.83 (talk) 23:05, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Pictures should be chosen for their informational quality, not volume, particularly for a subject in development and expansion such as this. But you do have a valid point, so please find or submit suitable pictures and we will take a look. The Lillgrund picture shows several desirable attributes such as scale, overview, background (landscape where the power is used) that other pictures lack. However, the Lillgrund photo lacks detail, but we can´t have it all (or can we?). Low altitude pictures lack the overview, and the other aerial photos lack landscape. This is a close second because it includes the transformer platform - if only it also had some land. TGCP (talk) 19:36, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Wind power vs. wind energy
An anonymous editor (who is, I'll bet, an electrical engineer) wants to change the title of this article to offshore wind energy - because "power" and "energy" mean different things in technical usage. (Here's an explanation: http://www.homepower.com/power-vs-energy) I would argue that "wind power" has become the generic, generally used term and thus should remain the title of this article regardless of whether you're thinking of instantaneous output or output over time. What do others think? - DavidWBrooks (talk) 18:53, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
 * This article exclusively handles 3-blade turbines with horizontal axis sending electricity to shore. We usually call this power, not energy, as in Wind power, Hydropower, and Power plant. If that changes, we may consider a name change. Energy is a much broader term, and may include gas, oil, nuclear fission, runaway trains and so on. Future technologies may provide other ways of exporting offshore wind energy to ship or shore (such as hydrogen and algae produced from wind energy), but let's take that discussion if it happens. TGCP (talk) 20:19, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Dear Wikipedia colleagues, this article is for average readers, not for electrical engineers. But every reader deserves to be well informed. Energy and power are well defined different terms, also for wind, gas, oil, nuclear fission or anything in the Universe. Well, one joule of energy released during one second gives only one watt of power, which is easy to understand. You can even feel such power as delicate heat from a one-watt flashlight bulb. It is relatively small power. But if you release the same one joule of energy during one microsecond, then you will get one megawatt of power. However, if a wind turbine can provide one megawatt of continuous power, that means enormous amount of energy during a year, but still only one joule during one microsecond. Energy and power are notoriously confused, because they are closely related to each other. That's all I have to say. The final decision is yours. 85.193.232.158 (talk) 13:55, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * We are well aware of the scientific difference between power and energy. Electrical equipment is usually quantified by power (kW), less often by energy (kWh). But why divert from the nomenclature used in those other electricity articles - what is the connection from your explanation to changing the name ? TGCP (talk) 15:24, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Why divert? I wanted to change the names of all related articles. But seriously - now I see that our - or rather my - problem is purely linguistic. Look at interwiki of Wind power. You will find "energy" in every language except English. But you will not find anything like "energy" in  Electric_power or Power (physics). So thank you for your time and energy. Oops... power? ;-) 85.193.232.158 (talk) 17:01, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Commonality would be appropriate. Technically, the most precise phrase could be "Wind electricity", but that is simply not used (and could be confused for static caused by helicopters). TGCP (talk) 18:09, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Commonality would be appropriate. What commonality?
 * Energy of wind is purely mechanical, so "Wind electricity" would be misleading. What about sailboats?
 * 85.193.232.158 (talk) 20:21, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Commonality among articles, both on en.wp and internationally, but WP has a policy of letting each language site have its own guidelines. The Wind power article is only about electricity; other forms are briefly mentioned and linked to. For example, the physics of sailboats is covered much better in Forces on sails. The Template:transclude can be used to share content concurrently between articles. TGCP (talk) 22:35, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

External links modified
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External links modified
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Better Citations Needed on "Environmental Impact" section
Right now, in the "Environmental Impact" section of the article, all of the citations link to the Tethys database. However, this website houses many thousands of journal papers / articles, and many of them have nothing to do with the environmental impacts of offshore wind power. Ideally we should see citations that link to specific, relevant papers, not just a place where one can look for papers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiikipedia wii man (talk • contribs) 05:17, 7 November 2016 (UTC)
 * You can copy the links from Environmental_impact_of_wind_power. From Tethys, I found this and this overview which seem to be a collection of current research. TGCP (talk) 17:33, 7 November 2016 (UTC)

Vertical Axis machines under types
I changed the section heading to "Future developments" instead of "Vertical Axis Wind turbines" @Ita140188 then reverted this edit. I want to explain my rationale for the change. It seems to heavily overemphasize vertical axis wind turbines to give them their own section. The topic is occasionally discussed at industry conferences, but I'm not aware of any companies seriously developing offshore vertical axis turbines (even in an early phase). There are no demonstrations, and I'm not even aware of any academic work on the topic (although I'm sure some exists somewhere, but this is a topic I spent some time researching and discussing in the past years). So to me to give it a section heading on the same level as two mainstream (or nearly mainstream) technologies is seriously out of balance. I suggest either deleting the info about vertical axis turbines or combining it with other potential future developments. Possums (talk) 15:21, 22 May 2018 (UTC)


 * I see your point. I mostly agree with you, but I think that as long as it is clearly stated that it is a type still in development, it is ok to leave the section. Floating turbines are also only slightly more developed than vertical axis turbines, with only a few demonstration turbines installed. Over 99% of capacity installed is horizontal axis fixed foundation wind turbines. Maybe we should emphasize this point. But I think it is useful to have an overview of the different major types of turbines developed/proposed. --Ita140188 (talk) 05:38, 23 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Maybe it would be sensible to combine floating and vertical axis under the heading "under development" or some other suitable moniker? Possums (talk) 07:50, 24 May 2018 (UTC)


 * In my opinion the section is fine as it is. Vertical axis turbines do exist, and they are sufficiently different to merit their own section. If there is any other major type of turbine that is at least seriously discussed for offshore it should be added too. --Ita140188 (talk) 08:35, 24 May 2018 (UTC)