I am always eager to learn more about new technologies and articles on energy-related and engineering professional topics via the sites and the journals of the institutions, IMechE, HKIE, etc. I remember once I came across a project-century video while making a search on Google, the video is quite attractive and encouraging to those who love and are passionate about things in large-scaled engineering, renewal energy, and science.. et cetera.
The video talks about a new idea for the installation of wind turbines which is originally on land, but now people can make them float at the sea; the concept of the project was bold-innovative that engineers erected five numbers of wind turbines at the northeast coast of Scotland instead of building them on the land there. With the support of a team of engineers and wind-energy-related experts, this project subverts the traditional design and construction of wind turbines. Before that, someone may say it’s impossible to happen and not reliable even if the hardware installation is successful, but someone will think it can. In September 2017, five floating wind turbines located off the coast of Scotland generating 30 megawatt-hour (6 megawatts each) to the nearby communities and commercial bodies through power cables to connect the offshore wind turbines and the onshore electrical stations where the power is distributed to the bodies in need.
I must say, I was relieved and found myself very excited while the last step of the process of the offshore installation was claimed, the step was the most challenging that the derrick needs to bolt the up-half and bottom-half of the floating wind turbine together, a prototype demonstrating the assembly was made in 2008 before this real fix in Scotland. The performance of the offshore floating wind turbines does work very well and they all are quite reliable in supplying green electricity as renewable energy. The most expensive one of the whole processes was to hoist up the parts and bolt them together by hiring a large-sized derrick dock which equips with two lifting cranes to help operate at the same time while having special needs, the derrick dock is nothing else can replace in this project. The video shows that the derrick dock its two cranes respectively hoisted for the 3-leaf propeller with turbine head and the upright post of the wind turbine on one hand, and it was driven to move slowly against the respective floating base on the other hand if there would have any error resulted from human factors or unsecured hold or a suddenly unintended movement of the dock due to uncertain natural like high winds and waves, then the turbine would have been destroyed with ease. That’s the exactly so-called “breakthrough in engineering” that I love!
The floating base its total length is 90m with immersing 90 percent under the sea level (down 80m from the sea level according to the video), three (3) eye bolts are evenly welded on the outside of the base for connecting the tie-down ropes which are anchored into the seafloor. For the sake of transmitting electricity from the offshore floating wind turbines to the onshore electrical stations is by the power cables connected. By statistically, floating-type wind farms can increase 40 percent more in electricity compared with the traditional land-built wind farms, offshore ones can generate more electricity due to the location where benefits from the intensity of wind directly.
I think a professional engineer shall have all-round ability and talents available for our community to resolve problems. Imagining a special inner-vacuum sealed steel-made bottle having a long-shaped profile and something like an oxygen gas bottle immersing two-thirds ratio of itself in the water that can stabilize its body and be adjusted to a prescribed floating-level by addition of the appropriate amount of ballasts and concrete. If a mechanical-disciplined engineer serves jobs just for the machines and hardware fabrication, then the way to resolve the floating problem of the wind turbine may not happen in the industry of renewable energy, this does not mean that A must rely on B, or B needs A, but mean that a person with more knowledge and talents will be better and more valuable.
[2] On 23 August 2021, an article of the Professional Engineering was published about a Chinese firm that unveiled the world’s biggest wind turbine, this is the tallest offshore wind turbine in the world now being assembled by China’s MingYang Smart Energy, the model of MYSE 16.0-242 is interpreted as a giant-sized wind turbine got 242 metres tall and will generate renewal energy’s power of 16 megawatts, it’s capable of powering 20,000 homes with three 118m blades, that will sweep across an area the size of six football pitches.
The world is changing!
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