Sep. 27--In the scramble to harness ocean wind power, floating turbine technology may be the holy grail. Turbines that can be floated into position and anchored in deeper water are the solution to much of the politics that confronts shallow-water projects, according to proponents of the concept.

A pair of announcements this month seems to herald the next step into deeper water. A Norwegian energy company has begun to produce electricity with the first fully functional floating turbine -- a project known as Hywind developed by StatoilHydro.

And less than a week after Hywind was turned on, Blue H USA announced it had applied to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to install a floating test platform 23 miles southwest of Martha's Vineyard.

It is an "important time" for floating wind turbine technologies, said Ray Dackerman, general manager for the subsidiary of the Dutch company Blue H Technologies BV. The test platform could be deployed by 2011, Dackerman said.

Blue H first proposed building a 120-turbine wind farm in the waters off Martha's Vineyard and New Bedford last year. Although the company for the time being has taken "off the table" the formal application for the wind farm it submitted to the U.S. Minerals Management Service, the test structure does not require the agency's approval because of its temporary nature, Dackerman and federal officials said.

Differing approaches

Despite broad conceptual similarities -- both technologies use mooring lines to anchor the buoyant components, for example -- the Norwegian and Dutch companies have taken different approaches to the challenges of floating turbines.

Blue H relies on an ocean floor counterweight to stabilize its two-bladed, 3.6-megawatt turbines; StatoilHydro uses a steel jacket filled with ballast that extends 100 meters beneath the ocean surface to keep its 2.3-megawatt turbine from toppling into the waves.

The Blue H system could work for waters between 30 and 300 meters deep, Dackerman said. StatoilHydro's turbine can be located in waters between 120 and 700 meters deep.

"We call it a slender-cylinder concept," said Sjur Bratland, asset manager for Hywind. The decision to use the steel jacket was based on StatoilHydro's 40 years in the oil and gas industry, including 20 years in the offshore market, he said.

"We believe this structure is well-suited for the harsh environment that we find in the North Sea and other places around the world," he said. After a two-year pilot project to collect data, the company will decide on next steps, Bratland said.