The world's first industrial-scale floating wind farm was approved

The world's first industrial-scale floating wind farm has been approved for construction, a joint initiative by Norwegian energy company Petronas and Siemens, which will be built in the North Sea off the
coast of Scotland.
Five six-megawatt turbines will be connected to the seabed by floating steel tubes, and the project, called Hywind, is expected to be completed
next year.

Floating wind farms can be placed in the deep sea, much deeper
than those that require groundwork fixation.
From this, it can penetrate deep into
the continuous strong winds of the open ocean.
Japan's deep-sea water, for example, has the potential to meet several times the country's electricity demand
.
Since 2013, two floating turbines have been operating
in the sea.

Currently, there are more than forty projects around the world, using a wide variety of design concepts
.
By loosely connecting to the seabed, the turbine can be placed at a depth of 1,000 meters
.

Of course, the difficulty with building such plants is the cost: more to house floating turbines than onshore wind farms, not to mention those with traditional energy sources
.
A 2014 study in the journal Renewable Energy found that a floating wind farm produced energy costs $93-263 per megawatt-hour, which is similar to the cost of traditional offshore turbine energy
.
But compared to other types of power stations, such as natural gas power plants, energy costs are much
more expensive.

Another study, published by The CarbonTrust, found that floaters can produce less energy than stationary turbines—but they face much higher construction costs (about $4.
7 million per megawatt of capacity for floating turbines versus $3.
9 million for stationary turbines).

Previous projects also did not give a positive precedent
.
The Fukushima Forward project on Japan's northwest coast is nearly twice as far offshore as expected to reach its planned power production
.
The U.
S.
company Principle Power, which had planned to build five floating turbines near the Oregon Sea and received $4.
7 million in funding from the U.
S.
Department of Energy, could not find a valid user
for the energy produced by the project.
As a result, the project is now at a standstill
.

Nevertheless, projects such as "Hywind" and "Fukushima Forward" are still
ongoing.
Advances in technology, mass production, and the use of cheap materials to reduce costs may give them hope
.
For example, a group of researchers in Portugal designed a floating turbine made of concrete instead of steel, which they believe could reduce manufacturing costs
by 60 percent.

If the cost can be reduced, the potential energy is very large
.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory is located in the city of Carolina do Golden, and its distant-water wind division manager Walter Radiance is not the manager of its ocean-going wind division.
Walt Musial said that along the U.
S.
coast, about 60 percent of technically available offshore wind energy is in the deep ocean below 60 meters deep, making it difficult to place traditional stationary turbines
here.
And this wind energy is about one megawatt of clean energy, which is basically equal to the electricity capacity
of the United States today.