A Windy California Dream: West Coast offshore plans anchored on new floating technology

摘要

The reason for tackling these challenges is easy to understand: federal officials anticipate those two areas off the California coast covered under Biden's announcement will produce up to 4.6 giga-watts (GW) of electricity. According to U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, that's enough to power up to 1.2 million homes. With the state set to lose the output of the 2.2 GW Diablo Canyon Power Plant in 2024, it needs new options for meeting its target of 100% carbon-free energy by 2045. Because the continental shelf drops away so quickly off the West Coast, developers are looking to float their wind turbines, rather than establish a more solid connection to the ocean floor. At those depths, the more permanent structures planned for East Coast installations simply aren't feasible. This makes Pacific coast wind farms a more ambitious undertaking than in Atlantic waters. Floating wind farms do exist. Equinor, the Norwegian state energy company formerly called Statoil, developed the first major floating wind farm, the 30-megawatt (MW) Hywind Scotland, in 2017 The company is now developing an 88-MW facility in Norway's North Sea waters, to power (somewhat ironically) offshore oil and gas platforms. However, with only 11 turbines, this installation-currently the world's largest, according to Equinor-would be dwarfed by potential U.S. West Coast investors' ambitions.