Wind Power Offshore

                                Offshore Wind Energy

        In the human history, wind energy has used for two thousand years, to product mechanic energy for the mill farmers or to pump water in farms.

        In 2030, according to the Global Wind Energy Council, wind energy could supply 20% of the electricity production in the world. We are going to see the facts which could to confirm this data and how the offshore wind power, with this advantages and disadvantages, can help to reach this objective.

        Nowadays, the electricity consumption in the world is about 20,000 TWh. In 2015, we can see that wind energy represents 450 TWh of the electricity production in the world for one year. In the article of the web site BOEM, we learn that 53% of the population lives in coastal areas. Moreover, according to BOEM, offshore winds blow stronger and more uniformly than on land. We know that the transport of electricity is an important source of waste due to the resistance of the cables and the extended lines of transportation.

Steve Sawyer, GWEC Secretary General, said “Now that the Paris Agreement is coming into force, countries need to get serious about what they committed to last December. Meeting the Paris targets means a completely decarbonised electricity supply well before 2050, and wind power will play the major role in getting us there”. So, that is why the proposition of offshore wind energy appears in the years 1990. The first wind turbine was installed in Denmark in 1991. The goal is to create huge wind farms in seas to bring energy in close contact with the coastal population. Always on the article of BOEM, we see an other important reason to develop offshore wind turbines. Developers are interested to make efficient wind turbines to have a great return rate. On the one hand to optimize the production of electricity and on the other hand to make it grow their companies to have a lot of future commands. For example with an increase of 2 Mph of the wind, the engine can produce 50% more electricity. We can understand with this data that industrials are interested to work on offshore projects. So, for example, to help policy makers and industrials, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has estimated wind resources in the USA. On the map of the USA, we can see clearly that areas with the most important wind speed are  in west coast and east coast. The NREL estimates in 2012 that wind power resource in the coast of United States is almost that 4,223 GW. To have a clear idea of the power, 1 GW could supply approximately 300,000 homes for their annually consumption. Thus it is an important source of renewable energy available to deal with the consumption of electricity.

        However, several project countries dispose of significant untapped renewable energy resources and intend to exploit it in the near future. The offshore wind resource has an huge potential. According to BOEM and the NREL, at this time, offshore wind energy installed is almost 4,45 GW. In addition to this power installed, there are projects under construction which will create 4,72 GW, and 30,44 GW are in technical prospection. There are over 50 projects on several countries which produce electricity now. Due to this data we see how it is possible to make offshore wind energy an important source of renewable energy.

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