David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer

Floating Offshore Wind Farms

Someday decades from now, California’s sprawling coastal cities could draw their power from floating windmills that bob on the sea like buoys, far from shore.

Their blades would spin over deep ocean water, turning in winds that are steadier and stronger than they are on land. Undersea cables would send their electricity to shore.

This kind of floating windmill has not yet been deployed en masse. But a model of one sits in the Berkeley office of Principle Power, one of several companies trying to tap the powerful winds at sea.

Principle has signed agreements with utilities to test its device, called the WindFloat, off the coasts of Oregon and Portugal. Three connected canisters filled with ballast water will support a wind turbine, with cables mooring the entire device to the seabed.

“The most prolific minds in the renewable energy business are talking about taking land-based wind and dragging that power out to the coast, which really doesn’t make much sense,” said Jon Bonanno, the company’s president. “It makes much more sense to generate that power from deepwater sources and transmit it to the coast.”

Used in Europe
While the idea may be simple, executing it isn’t.

Offshore wind farms have been used for years in Europe. But those windmills sit in shallow water, their bases bolted into the ocean floor. Wind farms proposed for the U.S. East Coast, including the contentious Cape Wind project off Massachusetts, take the same approach.

But the seabed off most of California’s coast drops quickly, close to shore. Standard ocean wind farms would have to be built near the state’s beaches, plainly visible from land. And they wouldn’t be able to cover much space, confined to a narrow band of water.

Oil companies have long used floating platforms to drill into the seabed far from shore. But those platforms tend to be wide and heavy, and they aren’t designed to catch the wind. A windmill floating on a small platform will have to endure heavy gusts without tipping.

Big rewards
The potential rewards are huge. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates that the wind blowing across California’s deep water could generate as much as 130 gigawatts of electricity. That’s roughly twice as much electricity as the state needs on a hot summer afternoon.

Principle Power, based in Seattle, last fall signed an agreement with the Tillamook People’s Utility District in Oregon to install the WindFloat off the coast of central Oregon as early as 2012. The project will start with a single WindFloat, capable of generating a maximum of 5 megawatts of electricity when running at full tilt. Megawatts measure the amount of electricity generated in any given instant, and one megawatt is enough electricity for 750 homes.

If all works as planned, the WindFloat project will expand into an entire offshore wind farm, covering 12 to 15 square miles and capable of generating 150 to 200 megawatts.

Concerns over birds
The WindFloat design is stable enough to withstand the fierce winter storms that pound Oregon’s coast, said Alla Weinstein, Principle Power’s chief executive officer.

Environmentalists, however, want to ensure that offshore wind projects don’t prove as deadly to birds as onshore wind farms have. Gary Langham, director of bird conservation for Audubon California, wants offshore wind developers to steer clear of island or coastal nesting grounds. In addition, the ocean surface off California has places where birds congregate to eat, mostly where upwellings of water from far below bring up their favorite types of food.

“You can get a hundred thousand seabirds in a big patch at once,” Langham said. “So the more we can do to avoid those hot spots, the better we’ll avoid impacts.”

E-mail David R. Baker at dbaker@sfchronicle.com.

Courtesy of WICKED LOCAL

Nauset High moves ahead with wind turbine plan

By Debi Boucher Stetson
Tue May 19, 2009, 06:00 AM EDT

EASTHAM – Nauset Regional High School is closing in on its goal of raising $45,000 to match a $400,000 grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative to design and construct a wind turbine on the school campus.

School officials envision saving close to $200,000 a year by having the school generate its own electricity, plus make money from the sale of excess electricity.

High school Principal Tom Conrad told the regional school committee last week that funds raised to date totaled “close to $30,000.”

Conrad said later that the turbine would probably be sited right behind the tennis courts “because that’s the farthest spot from our neighbors. We want to be sensitive,” he added.

Wind Turbines Eastham MA

Wind Turbines Eastham MA – Nauset Regional High School

Wind turbines have proved controversial in Eastham, where town meeting voters recently passed a new wind power bylaw after considerable debate and revisions. The bylaw allows 75-foot turbines throughout town, 100-foot turbines in the industrial zone on Holmes Road in North Eastham and 250-foot municipal turbines on the 125-acre town-owned parcel between Cable Road, Nauset Road and Ocean View Drive, the road that stretches between two Cape Cod National Seashore beaches. The high school is across the street from the Cable Road portion of the property.

“We had been talking about 343 [feet high],” Conrad told the school committee during a brief discussion on Eastham’s bylaw. “The higher up you go, the better the wind.” He noted that the wind tower at Massachusetts Maritime Academy in Bourne is 243 feet high. Conrad said he has been in touch with an official at Mass Maritime about sharing information regarding the success of their turbine. “They have been going for 18 months, and they have great data for us,” he said.

He said the school district is currently negotiating a contract with Boreal Renewable Energy Development to do a feasibility study and design the turbine. “We want to get on the fast lane for this – these are competitive grants, and we have been warned that if we delay we could lose the grant,” he said.

For that reason, the school is working hard to raise the matching funds. Gretel Norgeot, a parent who has spearheaded the fund-raising effort, said a letter to parents explaining the wind turbine project and appealing for donations will be sent home with high school students soon. (The letter has been approved by Nauset Regional School Committee.)

Norgeot said any size donation is welcome. “We have received many $25 donations and they all add up,” she said. She added that organizers would prefer many small donations to seeking out large donations, because receiving a large number of donations would demonstrate broad community support. “That’s what it’s all about, community,” she said. “We thought it was really important to get everybody involved.”

Fred Fenlon, Eastham’s representative on Cape Light Compact and a former member of the town’s alternative energy committee, has been working with Conrad on the turbine project and said he believes it will “absolutely” go forward. He noted that technically, the school does not need to comply with the town’s bylaws because the high school’s land was donated by Cape Cod National Seashore. “So it’s not really part of Eastham.”

Conrad indicated the school would try to work with the town’s bylaw. “The town has taken a new stand in terms of height, and we’re going to be looking at that to see what that means for us,” he said.

The wind turbine, he said, will be used as an educational tool in a number of different ways, starting with getting students involved in interpreting data from the feasibility study. “Next year we’ll offer a renewable energy course and with that will be wind turbines. From there I see it being integrated into all the subject areas – for instance, math.”

Fenlon said the educational aspect of a high school wind turbine is especially important today, because wind energy is an emerging field. “There are going to be people needed, and they have to be educated and trained, and hopefully they’ll be from the Cape,” he said, “and hopefully they’ll stay here, and raise families.”