With more than 95,000 miles of shoreline, the United States looks like an ideal candidate for offshore wind energy development. But it’s not that simple. A substantial portion of U.S. shoreline tracks the Southern Atlantic states and the Gulf of Mexico, where the winds are either too weak most of the year or potentially catastrophic… Read More

The challenges of developing practical, economical offshore wind power are pushing engineers and entrepreneurs to new heights — and depths — of ingenuity. We’ve talked about the pitfalls and potential of offshore wind and other marine renewables for years in our Ocean Engineering Blog. We’ve noted that it’ll never be easy to build technologies that… Read More

Ice hasn’t necessarily put a chill on the development of offshore wind in the Great Lakes of North America, but it does pose a significant challenge — both in the design of offshore wind turbines and the maintenance of subsea power transmission cables. Winter is a wildcard for the Great Lakes because the offshore wind… Read More

On average, European offshore wind turbines stand in 29 meters (95 feet) of water about 44 kilometers (27 miles) from the shore, WindEurope reports. These two stats underscore one of the key reasons why offshore wind in U.S. waters is a flyspeck compared to the installed capacity of European wind farms. The first U.S. offshore… Read More

A shallow patch of the North Sea is the site of an intriguing plan to reduce the cost and complexity of offshore wind farms. Announced in March 2017, the plan calls for the construction of an artificial island to form the hub of a massive network of wind turbines. One key advantage of a hub… Read More

In theory, thousands of miles of shoreline should make the United States an ideal locale for developing marine renewable energy. But tapping the energy from all the waves pounding the shores of the Atlantic, Pacific and Gulf coasts of the U.S., is an incredibly complex prospect. A wide range of obstacles must be overcome. Topographical… Read More

While more than 3,000 offshore wind turbines push electricity to power-hungry Europeans, the number of towering turbines in U.S. waters is precisely zero. But that’s about to change. The first U.S. offshore wind farm is slowly rising in the Atlantic Ocean south of the state of Rhode Island and east of New York’s Long Island…. Read More

Fundy Bay is famous for pictures of fishing boats tilted on their hulls — run aground by the immense power of the world’s largest tides. The waters of this scenic coastal inlet along Canada’s Nova Scotia and New Brunswick provinces rise and fall by more than 50 feet twice a day, every day of the… Read More

The offshore wind industry has fresh guidance on using reliable standards to determine the best depth for burying offshore wind farm cables. In February 2016, the Offshore Wind Accelerator based in the U.K. published advice to offshore wind farm operators to help them ensure they are burying their power cables at a safe depth. This… Read More

Offshore wind and solar energy have been getting all the attention in the quickly growing renewable energy industry, but there’s another player that is beginning to grow strength in the energy market – ocean waves and tidal currents, or “marine energy”. There are vast amounts of energy that are produced within the moving waters of… Read More