Researchers eye monitoring system for offshore wind energy impacts

Engineerblogger
Feb 15, 2012

The next generation of wind energy facilities in the United States may be built offshore where winds are stronger, floating platforms could be utilized, and links to power grids may already exist.

Though the development of such offshore wind towers locally is still in the conceptual stage, there already is concern over the potential impacts that the huge, rotating blades of wind turbines could have on seabirds and bats. Even attempting to monitor such impacts is daunting.

The Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center at Oregon State University has received a three-year, $600,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a multi-sensor array to record the interactions – including impacts – of birds and bats on the blades, platforms and towers of wind turbines.

“Unfortunately, the usual way to document the impact of wind turbines on birds and bats is to collect the carcasses,” said Robert Suryan, an OSU seabird expert who is principal investigator on the project. “That would be hard to do out in the ocean. Even on shore, surveys are limited at large or remote facilities and can be compromised by scavengers that remove the carcasses.”

So the researchers are coming up with a different approach – synchronizing an array of sensors that will include accelerometers to measure variations in blade movement from impact, visual and infrared cameras, and acoustic devices to record strikes and identify the bird or bat involved. The monitoring system will be designed to run continuously and on multiple turbines at once to estimate the potential impact of the entire wind farm.

The project team led by Suryan includes co-principal investigators Roberto Albertani, an OSU engineer, and Brian Polagye, an engineer from the University of Washington.

“This is the first foray into offshore wind energy for the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center,” said Belinda Batten, who directs the center, which is a joint effort between OSU and the University of Washington. “It builds upon our strengths in wave and tidal energy, and our efforts to gauge potential environmental impacts of new forms of renewable energy.”

Though the researchers’ focus will be on an array for offshore turbines, the sensors will have potential usage in terrestrial facilities as well, pointed out Suryan, an assistant professor of fisheries and wildlife at OSU, who works at the university’s Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.

The technologies for the array are not new, the researchers say, but integrating the instruments and developing automated strike detection software to capture events – and then remotely transmit relevant data – has not been done. In addition to the engineering challenge, the researchers must account for the impact of the rugged Pacific Ocean, where winter storms frequently produce 20- and 30-foot waves.

“In Oregon, many seabirds are heavy-bodied and fly close to the surface of the ocean – possibly below the sweep of the rotor blades,” Suryan said. “Potential collision with the lower tower and base is still a concern and will be monitored by this system. Studies are needed to identify which species fly at altitudes that might put them at risk of blade impact; we know less about how far and frequently bats move offshore.

“There is also the issue with platforms, which might attract birds as a roosting area,” Suryan added. “Some of it may depend on how far offshore they might be.”

The researchers will spend much of the next three years developing their instrumentation array and synchronizing the instruments. They will test their instrument array on land in Newport and on experimental turbines at Mesalands Community College in New Mexico and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado.

“There is a big push in New England to develop offshore wind energy, as well as in areas where oil and gas platforms already exist,” Suryan said. “One possibility is to use those platforms for hydroelectric power generation from the currents below, and wind energy from turbines above the surface. Our project was funded from an initiative to remove market barriers for developing offshore wind facilities, especially floating platforms that can be used in deep water.

“Regardless of where wind energy platforms are built – on land, or at sea – placement is critical,” he added. “You want to avoid major flyways and travel corridors.”

Source: Oregon State University 

Ride the wave: vessels for wind turbine maintenance

The Engineer
Nov 28, 2011

Softening the blow: the craft’s pods adapt to the water’s undulating surface, minimising bumps

A sea craft using supercar suspension could be the solution to maintaining offshore wind turbines.

It’s probably fair to say that wind turbines have become one of the most divisive forms of renewable energy available in the UK.

But whichever side of the fence you sit on, from a purely technical point of view it’s difficult to deny that the wind sector presents some unique and interesting engineering challenges.

For onshore turbines, engineers have risen to this quite impressively, demonstrating an ability to effectively transfer knowledge and skills from other sectors to solve issues such as torque handling with innovative gearless generators, for example.

With offshore, though, there is a whole new set of challenges to tackle and not just from a scale point of view.

Even the most robust turbines will be subject to routine maintenance and unscheduled downtime. So if the planned next-generation offshore mega-farms are going to be cost effective, engineers will need to get to them in potentially rough sea conditions or the turbines will sit idle and lose money (see panel).

For this reason, the UK Carbon Trust - through its industry-backed Wind Accelerator Programme - launched a competition this summer in order to find technologies that might help achieve this. The potential solutions detailed in the entries submitted so far are varied, but one thing they have in common is the need for some kind of vessel that can cope with large waves.

Continuing the tradition in the renewable sector of transferring technologies from other sectors, one of the potential solutions has its roots in the automotive industry.

Nauti-Craft is an Australian company headed by inventor and engineer Chris Heyring. While Nauti-Craft is focused on marine applications, it draws experience and ideas from a previous company co-founded by Heyring called Kinetic, which builds innovative suspension systems for high-performance cars.

These were used by Citroen to win the World Rally Championship in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and by Mitsubishi to win the Paris Dakar campaign in 2004 and 2005 - until, as Heyring puts it, ’they were banned for being too competitive’. The suspension systems are now fitted as standard to the current Toyota Landcrusier and Nissan Patrol off-roaders, as well as the McLaren MP4-12C supercar.

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BMT Nigel Gee presents Project Utopia

Engineerblogger
Oct 10, 2011

BMT Nigel Gee, a subsidiary of BMT Group, has announced its latest design, developed in partnership with Yacht Island Design. Project Utopia, an avant‐garde vision of a future concept breaks the traditional naval architectural mould which the market has come to expect and offers a truly unique outlook free from any conventional design constraints.

James Roy, Yacht Design Director at BMT Nigel Gee explains: "Visions of the future are often constrained by familiarity with the present or reflection on the past. Much is made in today's design community of starting with a blank sheet of paper yet many, if not all yacht concepts revert back to the traditional form - the perception that a yacht should be a form of transport becomes an immediate constraint. Utopia is not an object to travel in, it is a place to be, an island established for anyone who has the vision to create such a place."

Measuring 100m in length and breadth, and spanning over 11 decks with the equivalent volume of a present‐day cruise liner, there is enough space to create an entire micronation. The design is based on a four legged platform employing the same principals of any small waterplane area design for minimum motions in even the most extreme sea conditions. Each leg supports a fully azimuthing thruster and with four such units, the design can redeploy between desired locations at slow speeds. A large central structure bisects the water surface acting as the conduit for the mooring system which is a critical element of the design, as well as housing a wet dock for access by tenders. In addition to tender access the design features multiple helicopter pads.

The main accommodation and service spaces span some 11 decks with the uppermost deck covered by a retractable canopy. On the "13th Floor" there is an observatory with 360 degree views, at which point the occupants would be 65m above the water surface.

James Roy concludes: "Pioneering design ideas such as Utopia are exactly the types of projects that our team excel in. Our forward thinking approach and unrivalled state of the art engineering experience allows us to work closely with designers, stylists and shipyards, to bring these ideas to life and lead the market into the next generation of naval architecture."

Source: BMT Group

Additional Information:

• BMT Nigel Gee Ltd
• Yacht Island Design website 

LLNL partners with SWAY to launch deep sea offshore wind demonstration project

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
June 11, 2011

The amount of wind blowing off the California coast is teeming with potential. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory atmospheric scientists are working with a Norwegian company to possibly leverage that wind as a valuable energy source.

LLNL has signed a memorandum of understanding with SWAY, a renewable energy company, that has developed floating towers for wind turbines located in deep water. Though California has not yet approved offshore wind turbines, SWAY will launch a 1/5 scale prototype of the technology off the coast of Norway on June 10 to demonstrate how the system could work in the Pacific Ocean.

Towers for offshore wind turbines typically sit 0-30 meters deep in the water and are anchored to the ocean floor. Based on technology that was originally used for deep-sea oil drilling, SWAY has developed a system to generate more offshore power by locating turbine towers deeper in the ocean -- at depths from 60-400 meters. The turbines would sit on top of the floating, tethered tower.

"California has an abundance of deep water wind resources, so this is an opportunity for the state," said Nalu Kaahaaina, LLNL's Low-Carbon Energy Program leader. "This technology is clean, reliable and even more consistent than traditional onshore wind turbines."

Power generation from offshore wind turbines is significantly higher than onshore wind turbines. "We have offshore wind resources in California and the wind is blowing all the time," said Roger Aines, LLNL's Carbon Fuel Cycle Program leader. "If SWAY has success in Norway, the technology could be useful in California."

Lawrence Livermore has a long history in atmospheric sciences and scientists will provide their expertise in wind energy technology to help launch the project internationally, nationally and regionally.

The Laboratory works on numerical weather prediction models to predict power generated by the wind, so that wind farms can operate more efficiently while providing more power to hungry grids.

Predictive time frames range from an hour ahead to days ahead of time. LLNL scientists plan to include ocean circulation and wake turbulent studies to determine the most suitable sites for offshore deep ocean wind farms.

Using this data, Aines said wind operators can optimize the best locations for wind farms, on or offshore. In California, the only option for offshore wind turbines would be in the deep ocean, far away from coastlines.

"We're looking at how we might use the SWAY technology off the coast of California," Aines said. "With our California offshore resource, we can't do it with the current technology that's available today."

In the United States, offshore wind projects must strike a balance between technological and economic challenges and adhere to more demanding environmental requirements to be successful. The latest generation of offshore turbines is equipped to meet the challenges of the ocean environment and tough weather conditions, which can limit access for routine maintenance.

According to the American Wind Energy Association, wind energy made up 2.3 percent of U.S. electricity by the end of 2010, up from 1.8 percent a year ago.

Copyright from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Green Ocean Energy secures funding for Wave Treader

The Engineer
May 18, 2011

Green Ocean Energy has secured £45,000 funding through ITF to develop its Wave Treader technology for the oil and gas industry.

According to a statement, the six-month project will examine the potential of the Wave Treader device to provide sustainable electricity to unmanned platforms and offshore installations being decommissioned.

The device works by rotating to face into oncoming waves and converting the motion of the wave into electricity. This electricity is then fed back to the shore through the offshore windfarm’s existing cable network.

Graeme Bell, chief executive officer of Green Ocean Energy, said: ‘Wave Treader was originally designed to attach onto offshore wind turbines, but this project is to explore using Wave Treader with either new or existing offshore oil and gas installations.

‘Remote manned and unmanned offshore platforms currently rely on diesel generators for electricity. These incur fuel and maintenance costs, additional vessel activity and health and safety issues, as well as contamination and pollution risks. There is great potential for our wave energy project to revolutionise how the oil and gas sector is powered.’

Initially the project will assess the suitability and level of demand for a local energy source at a range of locations. Detailed investigation of wave resources, potential deployment methods and structural loading impacts will be carried out, alongside establishing a power matrix to quantify power demand and indicate the required size of Wave Treader.

Dorothy Burke, operations director of ITF, a not-for-profit organisation owned by 26 major global oil and gas companies, said: ‘Sustainability is a constant thread to new technology developments and this pioneering project could lead the way for the future of the offshore oil and gas sector.

‘ITF invested £25,000 from our Pioneer Fund, which supports the early-stage development of… technologies and also secured a further £20,000 investment from one of our operator members.

‘The Wave Treader device may be the key catalyst to a clean source of electricity to power offshore operations.’

Further funding for the project has been raised from GDF Suez, Tata Steel and Bosch Rexroth.

Additional Information:

• Green Ocean Energy - Wave Treader

Unique floating wind turbine model tests for DeepCwind at MARIN

Maritime Research Institute Netherlands(MARIN)
May 3, 2011

The Maritime Research Institute Netherlands(MARIN) is in the closing stages of testing three different floating wind turbine concepts for the DeepCwind Consortium (USA), led by the University of Maine. It is the first time in the world that such an extensive scale model test campaign is conducted in this field. Floating wind turbines are considered to be the next step in development of offshore wind energy, after the present generation shallow water fixed wind turbines. For this unique model tests MARIN and the DeepCwind Consortium worked closely together to develop a new high quality wind generation machine in the MARIN testing facility.
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Betting on Siemens with Offshore Wind

Reuters.com
Jan 25, 2011

A late comer to the wind turbine manufacturing industry, Siemens AG entered the wind business six years ago when it purchased the veteran Danish wind turbine manufacturer Bonus Energy. Europe's largest engineering firm, Siemens is also one of the world's primary suppliers of transmission infrastructure equipment. In 2010, the company's 3 and 3.6 MW wind turbines emerged as the top choice for offshore wind projects. Currently ranked 6th in the world in terms of total wind turbine sales, Siemens is expected to creep up to among the top three wind turbine suppliers by the end of 2012. While other turbines have reported weak sales over the past year, Siemens is showing strong sales in both onshore and offshore wind arenas.

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