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A researcher is looking at outflanking the mounting tide of "nimby" protests over the siting of windfarms by making it possible to moor the turbines out at sea.
"Wind turbine progress has been hindered in New Zealand mainly by complaints from residents about noise and the visual impact on outstanding landscapes," said Auckland University engineering researcher Hazim Namik.
But offshore windfarms could resolve all of these issues.
"The further they can be placed offshore, the better the winds and the less visual and noise impact they have on communities," he said.
Big land-based windfarms such as Meridian Energy's $420 million Wellington project at Makara, Meridian's Project Hayes on the Lammermoors in central Otago, and TrustPower's site on the foothills of the Lammerlaw Range, west of Dunedin, have attracted criticism over issues such as noise and adverse landscape and visual effects. But Mr Namik, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering who has been granted a $75,000 scholarship by the Tertiary Education Commission, said yesterday that the wind turbines criticised as an eyesore when they generated "clean" energy onshore could be placed out of sight at sea.
He is working on an onboard control system to overcome the rocking motions a floating wind turbine experiences in the ocean.
Development of offshore wind-farms has been constrained because building foundations to support wind turbines in water deeper than 20m is prohibitively expensive.
Offshore turbines fixed to the sea floor have been constructed, but only in depths up to 44m.
"For water deeper than 60m, the most feasible option is a floating wind turbine," said Mr Namik.
"After this point it becomes uneconomical to fix them to the sea floor."
- NZPA
