Floating ocean turbines proposed

Offshore wind farms have been built, but only in shallow water near coasts, and one naval architect wants to go much farther out by placing turbines on floating platforms, a release from the American Institute of Physics said.

Dominique Roddier of Marine Innovation & Technology of Berkeley, Calif., has proposed a platform design dubbed "WindFloat" based on existing gas and oil platform designs.

Roddier and his and colleagues published a feasibility study of the design in the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy, published by the AIP.

Testing of a small scale model in a wave tank showed the platform is stable enough to support a 5-megawatt wind turbine producing enough energy "to support a small town," Roddier said.

A full-size prototype being built in collaboration with electricity company Energia de Portugal "should be in the water by the end of 2012," Roddier says.