Coastal U.S. states and Canadian provinces are increasingly keen to exploit their offshore wind’s potential to generate clean electric power, but it’s what must take place logistically below the ocean’s surface that could tangle this endeavor.
A giant multimillion-dollar offshore wind turbine, capable of generating 3 to 6 megawatts of electricity, is useless if the power can’t reach the shore-side grid. Thus more than 100 miles of underwater cables, some with the thickness of telephone poles, are required to bring ashore the power from large-scale offshore wind farms of 150 to 200 turbines in a way that is economically and environmentally sound.
Avoiding logistics tangles
