The offshore wind industry is relatively young — the first offshore turbine went up in the waters off Denmark in 1991, whereas we've been building terrestrial turbines for thousands of years. Coincidentally, the first electricity producing turbine was built in 1887 by Scottish academic James Blyth at his vacation home in Marykirk, Scotland. But what the industry lacks in lead time, they have been more than making up for it with passion and hustle — the largest turbine in development, an 8-megawatt (MW) monster with a rotor diameter of 538 feet, is being built exclusively by Vestas for offshore placement and is expected to be available next year.
Offshore turbines in Scottish waters have to withstand all of the punishing weather conditions that land-based turbines face with the added stresses of the strong North Sea currents and salt water. It's not an easy environment to operate in. The challenges don't stop there — once the electricity has been generated, it then has to be transmitted back to the mainland over miles of underwater sea floor.
Nearly every turbine in the water today is fixed solidly to the ocean floor, by various designs. Some sit atop poles driven deep into the seabed while others are anchored by wide heavy bases that grip against the currents. If wind farmers want to push out into the really deep waters, they will have to perfect the floating turbine. Floating turbines still need to be anchored to the sea floor, but they are tied in with stabilizing wires, a much cheaper solution that will allow for operations in waters thousands of feet deep. It seems a simple enough proposition to build a floating turbine until you factor in the height and spread of modern turbines — the stresses created by enormous sweeping turbine blades hundreds of feet in the air will require a lot of creative engineering and masterful industrial design to reliably handle.
Today there are hundreds of oil rigs situated off Scotland's shores, each providing a long string of jobs to the oil workers and supply chain staff that keep them running. Oil and gas money ripple out across Scotland's economy, directly providing employment to hundreds of thousands of people and indirectly to millions more. But each of those jobs is dependent on one thing: there being more oil and gas to pump out of the ground.
In the face of production numbers that show peaking around 2001, Scottish business and political leaders know they need to do something if they wanted to stave off a decline in economic vitality that matches the decline in North Sea oil and gas reserves. Their solution is a pragmatic one — transfer the knowledge and expertise they have built up working in the oil and gas industry for the past four decades into a new industry producing clean, renewable energy. They want to turn Scottish oil rig workers into wind farm workers. They want Scottish welders building turbines and tidal power harvesters. They want to change from being leaders in offshore oil and gas to being leaders in offshore energy.
The road to worldwide leadership in offshore wind power is not without it's potential potholes and roadblocks. Not everyone in Scotland is excited about the idea of dotting their waters with industrial wind turbines. Perhaps the most public and vocal opponent of wind power is American reality television star Donald Trump. Trump, whose mother was born in Scotland, battled environmentalists and conservationists for years to build a sprawling golf course just north of Aberdeen.
He has put his plans on hold to build an additional 1,500 houses and a hotel on his property due to a proposed wind farm offshore from his golf course. Trump, who built part of his course on ecologically sensitive sand dunes, claims that the wind turbines will lead to the destruction of the coastline and local economy and vows not to move ahead with construction until the proposed $327 million 11-turbine development is killed.
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