Floating Wind Turbine: Natural Power Generation Breakthrough

Global warming is looming high over our heads and many companies are being forced to find ways to create a more efficient, natural way to provide electricity to billions upon billions of people and businesses. Wind turbines, sometimes called wind generators, wind power units, wind energy converters, or just plain windmills, are one of the main types of generators used to create energy. Wind turbines simply convert the power of the wind's energy into electricity by extracting electricity from the flow of the air over the surface of the Earth. Energy derived from wind is a form of energy that is well in abundance, renewable, clean, can be widely distributed, and doesn't harm or contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. Sadly, according to Wikipedia, only around 1% of the world uses wind turbine electricity, however its use has increased greatly since the year 2000. Since the year 2000, many homeowners in areas that have high winds and high cost electricity have turned to the use of windmills to assist in lower electric bills.

Environmentally speaking, wind power uses no fuel for ongoing operation, and has no releases related to the making of electricity, nor does it generate any other type of air pollution, not even carbon dioxide.

Wind turbines are usually located in areas where there is a large amount of land or offshore due to the fact that urban areas can cause interference and safety issues with gaining the wind power needed for energy creation.

According to www.windaction.org, due to the large areas needed to manufacture wind power, a German engineering firm called Siemens and a Norweigian Energy Group, Norsk Hydro are working together under a research pact to launch the world's first floating wind turbine in the North Sea by 2009.

This first floating wind turbine is quite more costly, about $33 million, as quoted by Planet Ark, but will be able to be out of sight, away from the migration routes for birds, and save consumers a ton on electric bills. If this floating wind turbine idea is successful, it can provide a moveable way to supply electricity for many major areas. The idea stated by Renewable Energy World is that if an area needs more power, the floating turbines can be unhooked from one area of the sea and towed to another to provide power.

Models, research, and estimations are showing the possibility of the floating wind turbines producing almost double what the land wind turbines are producing because of the strong offshore winds, as well as the fact that the new turbines will be places several hundred miles out to sea, right in the midst of the winds with no trees, buildings, or land masses to slow it down.

Installing wind turbines out to sea also takes care of a large safety hazard that many turbines seem to come in contact with. In a lot of cases, when a turbine's brake system fails, it inevitably causes the turbine to catch on fire, collapse, and may cause an ongoing fire to nearby homes and crops. Floating wind turbines will be out to sea and away from civilization, so if there is a fire or a collapse, the fire will be put out and no one will be hurt when it collapses. The only thing that we have to do is make sure that there is some sort of remote monitoring system to make us aware of such turbine problems so we can either go fix it or send a vessel to pick up the broken pieces out of the water.

With the first floating wind turbine in the works and the idea of use to be determined in 2009, a floating wind turbine park would be launched to be built by 2013, due to the cost it would take to build each turbine, also quoted by Planet Ark. This of course poses another concept. Global warming isn't going away, and with all of the ideas out there as well as the pressure put on many businesses to pursue a more natural energy efficient route, there is always money involved. Money hasn't always been around and it isn't going to solve our climate problems, but building amazing products such as the floating wind turbine will help our environment.

In conclusion, no matter what it costs us, no matter what extents we need to go, when a product like this comes available or even the idea is thrown out there, even if there is a one percent chance that it could decrease the amount of air pollution by even one half of a percent, we need to take the chance. Humans caused the air pollution and the global warming, so let's make the most to fix it. Breathing clean air and naturally powering our homes sounds like a great idea!