Ocean Engineering Blog:

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

The PMI team had a good week attending the recent International Partnering Forum for Offshore Wind in Princeton, NJ.  The exhibit hall, networking opportunities, and especially the B2B meetings with supply chain partners were great opportunities to meet with other developers, cable manufacturers, contractors, and installers. While this conference doesn’t have as much of an… Read More

The Oceanology International conference covers such a wide range of industries, all with the common mission of measuring, developing, protecting, or operating in the world’s oceans, providing lots of room for potential collaborations and idea sharing among market leaders. Being a conference with numerous offshore/subsea market leaders in attendance, it provides an opportunity for attendees… Read More

PMI certainly enjoyed the always educational environment at Subsea Expo 2018 in Aberdeen! It was a pleasure to meet with so many energetic and skilled specialists working within the industry. The innovative solutions our industry develops continue to amaze and inspire us within the promising direction of the offshore energy market. From the Awards Dinner,… 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

The corrosive effects of saltwater on subsea cables and accessories are well known. Freshwater doesn’t have quite the same impact, but it still raises a range of issues for offshore wind developers. The saltwater vs. freshwater comparisons are becoming more relevant as offshore windfarm projects along the Great Lakes of North America — the largest… Read More

Converting the immense power of our oceans into reliable electricity to light our cities, fuel our travels, and make our homes habitable is one of the great engineering challenges of our time. A beguiling array of wave-energy devices, tidal turbines, and coastal-barrage proposals are in the works to meet this challenge, but the prospect of… Read More

There’s nothing quick about developing an offshore wind farm. It takes years of site selection, political and financial wrangling, environmental reviews, and careful construction to make it all happen. But those timelines could be getting shorter thanks to developments in the European offshore wind market. An article in IEEE Spectrum in June 2017 noted a… 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