Has Hexicon just solved all of the issues surrounding offshore wind farms with a floating platform? Let's see - Wind farms are only feasibly installed in shallow water, there is a concern about underwater soil erosion and disruption of marine life, and the maintenance costs of a large windmill anchored to bedrock well below the water's surface are quite pricey. Hexicon's buoyant solution seems to tick off all of these boxes. Read on to see how.
This is a nice new way to go about this, but the fact is the platform is still going to wobble and pitch some. Those wobbles and pitches combined with larger turbines being forcibly turned by the wind creates potential for huge bending forces on the rotor. There’s people at work looking at how to deal with those kinds of bends (of more than a couple degrees) but until they figure out a relatively simple and cheap way to do that, floating wind is a no-go.
I think that sooner, rather than later, they’ll have the rotor bend problems figured out. I really hope they do at least. I’ve been designing something like this in my head for a few months now and basically this is exactly what I’d hope it would look like. I’m really glad they have an actual design out that looks to be a fairly legitimate attempt at the idea. Again though, that wobble is a huge concern I hope is seriously addressed very soon so this can all take off.
I very much like the idea of a floating wind platform. As these platforms could be made to any size they appear to be ideal for power generation in the many islands of the south pacific where primary power supplies are produced via diseal powered generation-very expensive and not so eco friendly. If placed in lagoons the rotor bend problems would be reduced almost completely. Overcoming the unnatural sight problem is another matter.