Renewable – Sustainable.
Economical?
Recognized global warming effect upon our climate and a growing public opinion against fossil fuels and the dependency upon these has translated into a political pressure around the globe to do something about this problem.
The economical climate has today as a result of this problem become beneficial for those who want to get involved in the renewable energy field. Amongst renewable energies, the most developed of these and readily available today is wind power.
Wind power existed initially primarily because of government subsidies. Today it has matured and is now becoming a more and more economically feasible industry. A 15-20 fold increase in efficiency and further development to be expected together with increasing prices of fossil fuels sets the stage for the future for this sustainable and also one of the cleanest of renewable energies available.
Over the past 20 years or so, it has become evident that wind is somewhat unpredictable but at the same time more dependable and more available at sea than on shore. This has made the wind power industry wanting to move “off-shore”.
Further, public opinion has started to turn against wind power and the erection of towers wherever you look. This includes both “off” and “on” shore installations. Off-shore wind power (until now) has had to be mounted “in sight” on the seabed not far off the coast, why it also has started to draw attention detrimental to further growth.
One important aspect is that the world is running out of suitable areas to mount towers on as well as offshore. Even though the wind is for free, it has to have the proper conditions to become as good as we want it to be. We also want it available at a price which allows it to compete with other less “clean” alternatives. Infrastructure and logistics with existing off-shore applications has become a problem because wind farms are located “by necessity” in areas where the energy is not consumed which makes it more expensive.
The service aspect, not so good redundancy and loss of efficiency are some of the additional drawbacks today with wind farms off shore. These Problems which have to be resolved, in order for these applications to become competitive. To be able to provide better solutions to these issues, we have to think outside the box and provide conditions, which will eliminate most of these problem which exist today.