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Giant wind farms to power data center and beyond

by on07 August 2009

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Even sea-based farms may be used


Baronyx, a Texas-based company, has announced that it plans to build a 28,000-square-foot data center in Stratford, Texas that will be powered by wind turbines: 38,000 acres will be offshore, and 8,000 acres will be onshore turbines.  Initially, the data center will be powered by 150 onshore wind turbines near the data center, located in the Texas panhandle.  Each turbine will be capable of generating from 3.3 to 6 megawatts of power.

Over time, however, the data center anticipates adding more machines, which will require more power.  Baronyx says it will then add 450 additional offshore turbines, which will be located in the Gulf of Mexico, and generate significantly more power.

The U.S. Department of the Interior has indicated that seabound wind farms located off the U.S. Pacific coast could generate 900 gigawatts of electricity per year and offer an excellent source of non-carbon based energy. However, the sea depth is too great in parts of the Pacific for a windmill to be able to anchor to the sea floor. However, a wind turbine deepwater project that is occurring off the coast of Norway is getting serious consideration by the U.S. government.

The project, named Hywind, is the world's first large-scale deepwater wind turbine. It was created by Norwegian company, StatoilHydro, the largest oil and gas company in Scandinavia. While it uses a fairly standard 152-ton, 2.3-megawatt turbine, but according to Walter Musial, the principal engineer for ocean renewable energy at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy, Hywind represents "totally new technology." The turbine will be mounted 213 feet above the ocean on a floating steel platform, or spar, used by StatoilHydro for the oil and gas industry. The spar is ballast filled and goes 328 feet below the ocean surface where it is tethered to the ocean floor by three cables to stabilize the platform and keep it from bobbing up and down in the waves.

The ability of Hywind to remain stable in the Scandinavian seas, which are known for turbulence and storms, should indicate that this type of technology can work in almost any sea or ocean.  If Hywind works as planned, its turbine will begin generating electricity six miles off the coast of southwestern Norway in September of this year.

In order to produce a significant amount of electricity a commercial wind farm would need much larger turbines than Hywind’s.  In order to do this, StatoilHydro plans to engineer a new kind of wind turbine with a gearbox that transfers power between the rotor and the generator located at sea level, instead of behind the turbine blades.

Seabound farms could provide strong winds that are more consistent than winds on or near land. The remote location also would overcome the tourist objections as to the appearance of wind farms near scenic locations.

Last modified on 07 August 2009
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