Tag Archives: offshore

2 gigawatts of Wind Power off Fukushima, plus solar



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?

Continue reading →

Wind farms in earthquakes and tsunami?



They keep working.

Kelly Rigg in Huffpo writes

Battle-proof Wind Farms Survive Japan’s Trial by Fire:

Colleagues and I have been directly corresponding with Yoshinori Ueda
leader of the International Committee of the Japan Wind Power Association
& Japan Wind Energy Association, and according to Ueda there has been
no wind facility damage reported by any association members, from either
the earthquake or the tsunami. Even the Kamisu semi-offshore wind farm,
located about 300km from the epicenter of the quake, survived. Its
anti-earthquake “battle proof design” came through with flying colors.

Mr. Ueda confirms that most Japanese wind turbines are fully
operational. Indeed, he says that electric companies have asked wind
farm owners to step up operations as much as possible in order to make
up for shortages in the eastern part of the country:

The only wind farms not operational are stopped because of failure
of the grid to feed electricity into, says Mr. Ueda:

Eurus Energy Japan says that 174.9MW with eight wind farms (64% of
their total capacity with 11 wind farms in eastern part of Japan)
are in operation now. The residual three wind farms (Kamaishi 42.9MW,
Takinekoshirai 46MW, Satomi 10.02MW) are stopped due to the grid failure
caused by the earthquake and Tsunami.

So they wind farms built like that could most likely survive a hurricane

in the Georgia Bight.

-jsq