Offshore wind farms power across the globe

Weekend Australian
Saturday 29/5/2010 Page: 2

OFFSHORE wind energy developments will see a huge expansion in the next five years, but Australians won't see towering turbines on their seafront any time soon. While overseas electricity industry analysts are predicting 80,000MWs of marine wind farms will be developed across the world by 2015-16, the Rudd government's new energy resource assessment says they are unlikely to be pursued here.

The report, written by Geoscience Australia and the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Resource Economics, says offshore wind stations are more important to countries with land access limitations, particularly in western Europe. "Because Australia has sufficient onshore sites with high potential, offshore generation is unlikely to be developed in the short term and Australia's offshore sites are likely to be high-cost due to ocean depth," it says.

Except in the US, offshore wind generation is going gangbusters in the rest of the world. SBI Energy, a US market analysis company, says marine wind farming can be expected to increase at a rate of 92% a year this decade, exceeding onshore capacity by 2015.

China and India have announced plans for substantial investment in marine wind farming, but the world leader is Britain, which has installed 1000MW of sea arrays and is planning to meet one-third of national power needs from the sector by 2020, a target that will require installing 6000 turbines in the often stormy waters between Scotland's Moray Firth and England's Isle of Wight at a cost estimated to reach more than $100 billion. The British developments will be a big contribution to the Europe Union's plans to have 40,000MW of offshore capacity by the end of the decade.

Critics say the EU plan will lead to a consumer backlash against much higher power bills European householders already pay on average 150% more for electricity than their Australian equivalents because of the large subsidies needed to make the turbines viable, but wind power boosters say they will be cheaper to run than conventional power stations, will create thousands of jobs and won't have future fuel supply problems because "there is an infinity of wind."

The biggest international development could come on the US Atlantic coast, where the wind industry is arguing it could create a 3000km network of interlinked offshore turbines, overcoming the intermittency hurdle. However, they are confronted by a strong "not in my back yard" reaction, epitomised by the nine-year battle to develop a wind project in the waters of Massachusetts' Nantucket Sound that now depends on a decision by Barack Obama's Interior Secretary.

Geoscience Australia and ABARE say the greatest hurdle facing wind-farm development offshore is cost, including expensive offshore foundations and grid connections plus higher operation and maintenance costs comp are d with onshore installations. While the agencies see water depths as a problem for Australian marine wind developments, they also point to research into replacing turbines fixed to the seabed with large, floating facilities tied to the sea floor with cables. If successful, they say, this would enable offshore wind systems in water more than 100m deep.

One advantage of offshore wind farms in Australia could be their location nearer large load centres than onshore developments. Big demand across the world will also bring down the equipment costs in this decade, with China looking to grab a large share of the offshore wind manufacturing market.