5.3.2 OFFSHORE

Northern Europe is now seriously installing wind farms on the offshore continental shelf (fig 5.15), where good wind regimes and less restricted space is available. New engineering techniques have been developed for subsea foundation systems for the towers, and the extra costs can be partly offset by continuing the trend to larger machines into the range 2-3 MW, with corresponding increases in total power up to 60 MW per farm (enough to provide about 50,000 homes). Although fewer planning objections on visual or acoustic grounds are expected than on land, other hazards such as interference to radar and military aircraft must be minimised.

Fig 5.16 shows that the substantial rate of wind farm installation already reached in Europe (over 6GW per year) is now expected to continue, as offshore projects begin to take over from the impressive recent land based expansion. It is also interesting to see that the target for the year 2010 set by the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) has been increased twice, and is now 3 times that set in 1991. The current target of 75 GW in 2010 will meet one third of the EU's total Kyoto commitment and deliver half of the Renewables Directive target.