Southern Company didn’t

do the renewable energy study for Georgia
when Mark Z. Jacobson’s study showed

All U.S. east coast electricity could come from offshore wind 3 seasons out of 4.
Now somebody else has, including how to build offshore wind turbines
to withstand hurricanes.

Rob Gilhooly wrote for New Scientist 16 January 2013,

Japan to build world’s largest offshore wind farm,

The wind farm, which will generate 1 gigawatt of power once
completed, is part of a national plan to increase renewable energy


resources following the post-tsunami shutdown of the nation’s 54
nuclear reactors. Only two have since come back online.

The project is part of Fukushima’s plan to become completely energy
self-sufficient by 2040, using renewable sources alone. The
prefecture is also set to build the country’s biggest

solar park.

The wind farm will surpass the 504 megawatts generated by the 140
turbines at the Greater Gabbard farm off the coast of Suffolk, UK
— currently the world’s largest farm. This accolade will soon
pass to the London Array in the Thames Estuary, where 175 turbines
will produce 630 megawatts of power when it comes online later this
year. The Fukushima farm will beat this, too.

How will these wind turbines work?

To get around the cost of anchoring the turbines to the sea bed,
they will be built on buoyant steel frames which will be stabilised
with ballast and anchored to the 200-metre-deep continental shelf
that surrounds the Japanese coast via mooring lines.

But what about hurricanes?

Project manager Takeshi Ishihara of the University of Tokyo insists
that the area’s seismic activity won’t be an issue for the turbines.
His team have carried out computer simulations and water tank test
to verify the safety of the turbines not just in the event of an
earthquake or tsunami but also in other extreme conditions such as
typhoons. “All extreme conditions have been taken into consideration
in the design,” he says.

So U. Tokyo has done the study Georgia Power and Southern Company
couldn’t be bothered to do, and have designed wind turbines that
can withstand hurricanes.
How long until a Japanese company starts building wind turbines off
the Georgia coast?

In case the point wasn’t clear enough:

Once the farm is running at full power, the intention is that it will
supply electricity to the powerful grid which Fukushima’s two nuclear
power plants were connected to, reducing transmission costs.

The irony if TEPCO ends up building solar and wind power in Georgia….

-jsq