Wind Energy

Marine platform will jointly harness energy from wind power and waves

The Poseidon project, a plant that harnesses power both from waves and wind energy, was developed by Danish-based company Floating Power Plant (FPP) and was presented at the Nordic Green II exhibition, held at the end of April in Menlo Park, California.

Poseidon is a floating platform that, while harnessing energy from waves, is also used as foundation for offshore wind turbines. Poseidon is a concept for a floating power plant that transforms wave energy into electricity. The power plant furthermore serves as a floating foundation for offshore wind farm, thus creating a sustainable energy hybrid.

A 37 meter offshore demonstration plant was launched in the summer of 2008. A full scale Poseidon plant can measure from 100 and up to 420 meters depending on wave and wind conditions at the chosen location.

A Poseidon 230 meter scale plant is expected to perform as follows:

* Efficiency of transforming inherent wave energy to electricity of 35%
* The total installed effect of the plant is 10 MW, including the 3 wind turbines
* Energy yield from the waves of 28 GWH per year provided the plant is located in the Portuguese part of the Atlantic Ocean
* Energy yield from the 3 windmills of totally 22 GWH per year

The project took over ten years to develop, and is now considered ready for commercialization. A number of full scale offshore turbines have already been tested on a Poseidon prototype (37 metres long, 25 wide and 6 high) installed at Nakskov Harbour (Denmark) in September 2008.

The size of commercial facilities will range between 100 and 420 metres. According to its designers, the intermediate 230-metre model could have a capacity estimated in 10 MW and will generate about 50 million kWh per year, of which 28,000 from the waves and 22,000 from three wind turbines.

Poseidon will be able to use offshore wind turbines that are already used on the market, with a capacity ranging from 1.5 MW to 5 MW, depending on the amount of turbines for each platform and the size of the platform.

The pumps used for wave energy harnessing are highly innovative in a way that makes them far more efficient than currently used technologies: a special anchor buoy system ensures that waves always meet the front of the plant, thus avoiding energy losses due to the caster angle.

www.floatingpowerplant.com/

www.enelgreenpower.com