ORONO, MAINE – As waves grew and gusts increased, a wind turbine bobbed gently, its blades spinning with a gentle woosh. The tempest reached a crescendo with little drama other than splashing water.The demonstration featuring a 13-foot-tall floating wind turbine in an indoor pool aimed to ensure it can withstand the strain of powerful water and wind when much larger versions are deployed in the ocean.
“These structures are massive,” said Anthony Viselli, chief engineer for offshore wind technology at the university’s Advanced Composites Center, after the demonstration wrapped up. “These would be some of the largest moving structures that humankind has endeavored to create. And there would be many of them.”
The first floating wind farm started operating off Scotland’s coast in 2017. In the United States, the Department of Interior two weeks ago proposed the first floating wind energy auctions for the Gulf of Maine, following lease auctions for the West Coast that began in 2022. The nearly 1 million acres up for auction off the New England coast could generate enough clean wind energy to power more than 5 million local homes, the department said.
“This is a global problem and this is an ideal solution in order to deliver power to shore,” said Gazelle Wind Power CEO Jon Salazar. Trailblazers in offshore wind are benefiting from work done by the oil industry, which engineered floating oil and gas rigs, said Habib Dagher, director of the Advanced Composites Center.
Size and efficiency are keys to profitability. Larger wind turbines mean fewer are needed, reducing construction, installation and maintenance costs, Viselli said. With greater size and efficiency, developers envision only about 50 turbines needed to produce about the same amount of electricity as a nuclear power plant.