If not nuclear... offshore wind power?

It's my biased opinion that if the world does not continue to nuclearize, then it will run short of energy. Of course, there's that big solar power installation in the Sahara, and there's always the chance that developed countries will become more energy efficient (I'm not holding my breath) -- and maybe vehicular fuels will get a big contribution from the biofuel side. All of which is a hope, not a reality at all yet.

What's left is wind. Putting up wind turbines seems to be something that is somewhat in vogue these days. The problem with wind is that the individual turbines are not big power generators. For serious energy generation, a lot of them are required. Thus the appeal of offshore wind farms (plus, they don't clutter up scenic ridgelines).

So can offshore wind power be a substantial contributor to the 21st century energy mix?

Maybe.

Here's what the Germans and the Dutch are looking at -- the stormy North Sea.

Offshore wind power in the North Sea offers huge potential but enormous challenges

So, how much is possible?

"... the North Sea could become home to offshore wind farms with a combined generating capacity as high as 135 gigawatts by the year 2030." That's a lot of power. That's like 135 nuclear power plants. And not little plants, pretty good-sized ones.

So are there problems?

"Researchers believe that the potential capacity calculated in this study can only be implemented if favourable conditions are created in all countries with a North Sea coastline. This means that politicians will have to make a larger area of the North Sea available for wind power than has so far been the case."

As I read this, that could potentially mean that hundreds of turbines (stretching to 1000s) would be needed to generate all this power. Most turbines are 1, 2, and occasionally 4 MW. Let's say that all the ocean turbines are 4 MW. So how many turbines would be needed to generate 135 gigawatts?

33,750. And if they were all the big offshore wind turbine variety that companies are still trying to engineer, it would still be 13,500 turbines.

Yeah, a MUCH larger area of the North Sea, I guess.

Offshore, in a windy stormy ocean, and I'm sure a few of those thousands of turbines might break down every now and then. Good money job maintaining those things.

I'll believe it when I seen an offshore wind turbine farm generating 10 gigawatts.



Multiply this by 50 - if each of these was a 10 MW turbine -

to get 10 Gigawatts.