The consortium, calling itself the Lake Ontario Offshore Network, aims to make Ontario the North American capital of offshore wind development. The group includes Windstream Energy Inc., the only company that holds a feed-in-tariff contract with the Ontario Power Authority to sell power from offshore wind turbines into the province’s electrical grid. It doesn’t matter that Windstream, because of the moratorium, can’t currently develop its project. It hopes that by bringing together an industrial consortium it can dangle thousands of jobs in front of the government and possibly convince the powers that be to reconsider its offshore ban.

The cast that has been assembled for this PR play is impressive. The consortium includes turbine suppliers Siemens Wind Power and Vestas Wind Systems, steel fabricator Walters Inc., steel supplier Essar Steel Algoma Inc. and a number of small and medium-sized companies — Anchor Concrete Products Ltd., Ortech Power, Samuel & Son Limited, Akzo Nobel Coating Ltd. and Bermingham Foundation Solutions, to name a few. In total, 18 companies/organizations large and small have signed on, representing a comprehensive supply chain and about 1,800 jobs that could exist over a five-year period if Windstream’s project ever got the go-ahead.

And what is this project? Windstream, which is based in Burlington, Ontario, is planning to build a 100-turbine, 300-megawatt offshore wind project about five kilometres west of Wolfe Island, which is an island just offshore the city of Kingston, itself about 250 kilometres east of Toronto. My own personal feeling is that it’s not the greatest site for development, if only because it’s not far from the onshore wind farm that’s currently located on Wolfe Island and has been a lightning rod for controversy from the beginning (partly because of the density of wind turbine development there). Windstream is proposing that the government keep its moratorium but allow an exemption for its $1.5 billion Wolfe Island shoals project, on the grounds that it would be a pilot project used as part of studies that would determine if further offshore development is the right step forward.

You’ll recall from an earlier column of mine that the “pilot project” approach is one that I support and proposed last July. Specifically, I wrote, “Maybe we would have been better off to focus initially on a public-private pilot project, one located several kilometres offshore in a carefully selected location; one that could be closely studied and be a launch pad for future economic growth.” I’m happy that Windstream has embraced this approach, and it will be interesting to see how the government responds to this invitation.

But here’s the thing: I’m not convinced this is the “carefully selected location” that would be ideal for a pilot project. I’m also not convinced that a 300-megawatt project could rightly be called a “pilot”. I understand the need to go big. There are simply better economies of scale. But if a pilot was truly what Windstream envisions, it should break up the project into smaller phases, with the initial pilot phase being no larger than 20 or so megawatts (similar in size to the world’s first lake-based wind farm in Lake Vanern, Sweden) with plans to develop larger phases once the pilot has been properly studied and ultimately convinces the Ministry of Environment that offshore wind makes sense for Ontario.

I would also argue that there are much better sites to consider for a pilot, including those once held by Trillium Wind Power before the government wiped the slate clear and unjustly forced all developers without a FIT contract to start from scratch. Trillium, by the way, had also started developing a supply chain consortium before the rug was pulled from under it, resulting in a $2.25 billion lawsuit filed against the Ontario government. One wonders how any company could trust dealing with Queen’s Park these days.

But Windstream is the one that finds itself in the fortunate position of being the only developer with a FIT contract. Whether the piece of paper it holds gives it the edge when it comes to pilot-scale projects, that’s unclear. After all, pilots are given special consideration. Presumably, FIT or not, picking the location of a pilot project should be based on the site, not the developer.

The saga continues…

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Tyler Hamilton

There was a time not so long ago that seeing a single wind turbine spinning in the distance was a novel experience for most people.

Not so much any more. There are now hundreds of wind turbines scattered across the province, representing 1,700 megawatts of wind capacity in Ontario alone — or just over a third of all capacity in Canada.

Hundreds more are in the queue waiting to be installed. Most are large turbines, about 2 megawatts or more in size, and between 80 and 100 metres high. All look pretty much the same: a big tall white tower with three spinning blades attached by rotor to a massive nacelle, which houses the generator and gearbox.

But as researchers continue to improve the efficiency of wind power generation it’s quite possible that the turbine of tomorrow will look dramatically different.

There are proposals for two-bladed turbines. There are vertical-axis turbines that look and spin like egg beaters. One company called FloDesign has a turbine that looks like a jet engine on an airplane, while Toronto-based WhalePower wants future turbine blades to resemble humpback whale flippers.

Over at the University of Ottawa, a group of students and professors who dub themselves the “Green Engineer” have come up with their own creative approach — a wind turbine with two sets of blades each spinning in opposite directions.

They call it the contra-rotating small wind energy converter. Wind tunnel tests on a prototype have shown that the design is up to 40 per cent more efficient and far less noisy than a conventional single-rotor system.

The benefits of having contra-rotating blades are well known. In fact, the design has existed for more than a century and is widely used, for example, in propeller systems of submarine torpedoes. The concept is also used in airplane and boat propulsion systems, not to mention those remote-controlled toy helicopters you can fly inside your house.

Riadh Habash, professor of technology and engineering at the University of Ottawa, says his team decided three years to apply the same approach to wind turbines and are encouraged so far with the results — so much so that they’re busy building a second prototype that will be mounted next summer atop a building on the Ottawa U campus.

Why is having two blade systems spinning in opposite directions more efficient?

When the wind blows into a conventional three-bladed, single-rotor wind turbine less than 40 per cent of its energy is converted into electricity. The rest escapes, much of it in the air wake that’s created behind the blades. That wake spins in the opposite direction (i.e. counter-clockwise) to those blades.

If a second rotor with another set of blades is right behind the first rotor, and if it is designed to also spin counter-clockwise, it can capture energy from that wake. The end result is a turbine system that harnesses much more energy from the initial flow of wind.

Experiments to date also suggest that a turbine with such a design can operate at lower wind speeds, allowing it to tap into a broader range of wind resources.

Habash says an added, but just as important, benefit is that the design is also quieter. “We have observed that when you have two sets of blades that are contra-rotating they achieve a kind of vibration cancellation. There is a clear reduction in vibration.”

This is good news, as one of the biggest issues hindering the deployment of wind energy — particularly in Ontario, for some reason — is concerns related to noise and inaudible vibrations reportedly experienced by nearby residents.

The Green Engineers and their industry partners, including Ottawa-based TRIAS Innovations, have some other tricks up their sleeves. All of them are aimed at producing a superior wind turbine with all parts — blades, generator, power electronics, drive train and tower — manufactured in Canada.

They’re even chatting with WhalePower about incorporating its whale-inspired blade design, further adding to turbine efficiency and noise reduction.

“Our target market for now is small wind turbines,” says Habash, who leads the team. “We are aiming at 10 kilowatts. But in the future that could go up to 100 kilowatts, and if we can prove the concept it could then be applied to much larger turbines.”

The project has been funded by the university, Ontario Power Authority, Ontario Centres of Excellence and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Habash hopes to be able to demonstrate the second machine in a number of locations. One would be part of a combined wind and energy storage project in an aboriginal community. “We have some investors who are very interested in using this for community power,” he says.

It’s still early days, but it’s an example of how wind power design could evolve over the coming years, based on innovation coming directly out of Ontario.

Check out this YouTube video from the University of Ottawa.

Tyler Hamilton, author of Mad Like Tesla, writes weekly about green energy and clean technologies. Contact him at tyler@cleanbreak.ca

Mad Like Tesla: Underdog Inventors and Their Relentless Pursuit of Clean Energy was launched this month and has been well-received. The reviews so far have been positive, and awareness of the book is slowly building. But not fast enough. I want to take this moment to ask my readers, many of whom have already purchased the book (thank you!), to help spread the word. Share this link or the Mad Like Tesla website (www.madliketesla.com) on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Refer to it when commenting on the various blogs you might follow. And for my media friends out there — whether in the mainstream press or the blogosphere — please consider a review, or alternatively, I’m happy to chat about the many odd and inspiring stories in this book. Please see press release here.

Thank you all for your ongoing interest and support. BTW: Many have asked, so I’m happy to report that the e-book version of Mad Like Tesla is now available at Amazon.com.

You see, Hydro One and its union are complaining they can’t keep up with the demands of homeowners and farmers who want to connect their solar rooftop systems to the grid. Industry, in response, is wondering what gives? If Hydro One can’t do it — and many justifiably accuse the utility of intentionally dragging its feet — then let’s let other players come into the market that can do it. Of course, Hydro One doesn’t want that because it threatens its hegemony over the Ontario grid. Hydro One has had two years or more to prepare for the increased connection requests that were expected to come through the feed-in tariff program, yet it is acting now as a deer in the headlights that couldn’t possibly accommodate the influx without sacrificing grid reliability. It leads one to believe whether top officials and union leaders at this utility — which earns generous incomes through Ontario ratepayers (they seem to forget about this) — are intentionally delaying action in hopes that a Progressive Conservative government will be elected, after which they can continue with the status quo: nuclear and fossil fuel generation.

What gets me is the misinformation they’re prepared to spread through these full-page advertisements. Here’s one: “So far, the tens of billions Ontario has spent on intermittent wind and solar energy is not delivering the promised benefits to the environment or the economy.” Wha? Would be nice to see something backing up that claim. I mean, Ontario ratepayers only pay for the renewable energy they receive, and two, any capital costs have come from the private sector, not ratepayers, and these investments have created thousands of jobs — non-unionized jobs, which is what is ruffling the PWO’s feathers.

PWO is pro-nuclear, pro-centralized generation, and pro-big transmission at a time when the global electricity market is moving to become more decentralized and less carbon-intensive. It is a throwback to an earlier era, and it’s struggling to protect what it has and it won’t let the truth get in the way.

That’s the real threat to the future of Ontario’s electricity system, not green energy.

BTW: Here’s my response to her last major assault on green energy back in April 2010.

Here’s my response to Wente’s most recent anti-green column, starting with the Globe’s headline: “Message to McGuinty: Most green-job schemes have been miserable failures.”

I can’t believe the headline writer and overseeing editor would allow the word “most” to make it into that headline. Wente doesn’t back up the “most” claim with any statistics, let alone credible ones. And the few examples she cites are small, based on someone else’s reporting (such as one problematic report in the New York Times) and/or come without any context.

Now, here’s Wente’s opening two paragraphs:

Dalton McGuinty has hit the campaign trail, and he’s paving it green. Earlier this month he announced that Ontario will pump $80-million into building charging stations for electric cars. “They are peppy, they are quiet, and the thing that I like best as a father, and ultimately a grandfather, I would hope, is that they’re clean,” he said. By 2020, he hopes, one out of 20 cars in Ontario will be electrically powered.

Meantime, Costco, the giant retailer, has pulled the plug on its electric car-charging stations, which it had installed in its California parking lots. The reason is that nobody uses them. Even China – which promised it would leapfrog the world in electric-car development – is backing off.

First, Costco is removing chargers that were installed back when GM introduced its EV1 electric vehicle to the market in the 1990s, before the cars were crushed and shredded. Costco says the chargers aren’t used, but that’s largely because electric vehicles only began hitting the market this year and the chargers that are in place are outdated (i.e. based on old standards) or simply stopped working, as you’ll read further down in this Daily Mail story.  Second, Costco is just one company seemingly going against the grain at a time when dozens of others, including Best Buy, IKEA, Walgreens and Lowe’s, are adding them. Personally, I don’t think retail stores are ideal places for EV charging systems, but the fact that so many big brand operations are beginning to test them and deploy them is a good sign. For Wente to cite the Costco decision as proof that EV charging systems, and thus electric vehicles, are being abandoned is quite the stretch. Also completely wrong is her unsupported comment that the Chinese are “backing off.” How she came to this conclusion is beyond me, but perhaps she didn’t read China’s 12th five-year plan. By 2015 China plans to have 4,000 charging stations and growth is expected to increase rapidly from there with plans to invest nearly $5 billion in charging infrastructure by 2020, at which point the country will have at least 10,000 public state-run charging locations, not including the tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of private home and business charging stations that are expected to emerge. That doesn’t sound like backing off.

Indeed, research firm Pike Research projected last week that there will be 7.7 million charging stations for EVs located in homes, workplaces and public spaces worldwide by 2017, with about 1.5 million of them located in the United States. So much for backing off. I’ll admit that’s an ambitious prediction, but the trend is clear — yet Wente cites a decision by Costco to remove obsolete charging systems as proof that the market for EVs and their associated charging infrastructure is fading.

The rest of the world has begun to discover that the green dream is a mirage. Across the U.S., federal, state and city governments have poured zillions into green schemes. Most have been miserable failures.

The city of Seattle, for example, got $20-million from the U.S. Department of Energy to retrofit houses and make them more energy efficient. The money was supposed to create 2,000 jobs and retrofit at least 2,000 homes. But by this month, only three homes had been retrofitted and only 14 jobs created. Even the greens admit the program is a total flop.

There’s that “most” word again, as in “most have been miserable failures.” She’s referring both generally to green energy initiatives spearheaded by government and specifically to a small $20-million household retrofit program in Seattle that didn’t deliver promised results. Forget that maybe, just maybe this specific program was mismanaged. So what? I mean, programs — private or public — get mismanaged and don’t produce results all the time. Hey, the market even screws up, too. You know, like how mismanagement by U.S. and European banks led to a worldwide financial crisis? No mention of that, of course. Also no mention of how successful the Canadian federal government’s EcoEnergy home retrofit program was before it was cancelled in 2010. In all, Ottawa committed $750 million to a program that encouraged Canadians to spend $4 billion of their own money. In doing so, those Canadians will save an average of $340 million a year every year on their energy bills — all of it money that will be reinvested in the Canadian economy each year. Also, the $4 billion spent by homeowners generated $250 million in GST revenue for the government. All of this also created thousands of jobs, contributing even more tax revenue to Ottawa. How can that be categorized as a miserable failure? It can’t, which is why Wente didn’t mention it — it didn’t fit with her message or her goal, which is to poke holes in the McGuinty government’s green energy and electric vehicle strategy and give momentum to the opposition PC party as a provincial election approaches.

Green projects, it turns out, don’t create many jobs, and those jobs are costly. Barack Obama recently visited a plant in Michigan to tout its investment in new battery technology. The plant got grants of $300-million, and expects to create 150 new jobs. That works out to $2-million a job. Then there’s SolFocus, a company in San Jose, Calif., that produces solar panels. The mayor called it an “enormously important” development for the city’s economy,” The New York Times reported. But the company assembles its solar panels in China, and its new headquarters employs just 90 people.

During his 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama promised to create five million green jobs over the next decade. But as The New York Times reported last week, “federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed.”

At this point Wente hasn’t established that green projects don’t create jobs, but she goes ahead and makes this statement anyway, giving only a tiny snapshop of job creation by mentioning two more ventures — one an electric vehicle battery maker and the other a maker of solar panels. She talks about how one government investment in a battery maker worked out to $2-million a job, though she doesn’t talk about future job growth at that company that was seeded by this government money — she only talks about the situation as it stands today so early in the birth of this new market. And this is where Wente goes off tracks, referring to a recent New York Times report that was clearly the inspiration for her column in the first place. That is, she waited for a juicy story in a more left-leaning U.S. newspaper like the Times and used it as a way to legitimize her own biases on the green energy topic. After all, it’s juicy to quote the Times saying “federal and state efforts to stimulate creation of green jobs have largely failed.”

But the Times article was also a failure of journalism. As Joe Romm points out at Climate Progress, isn’t it kind of strange to declare a program a failure about two or three years into a 10-year mandate? As Romm writes, “Imagine if, in 1963, two years after JFK’s famous speech to Congress, the New York Times had run a story, ‘Space program fails to live up to promise.’” Let’s keep in mind as well that the space program wouldn’t have gone far either if, during that time, a U.S. Congress filled with anti-science, anti-government Tea Partiers prevented the flow of money into Kennedy’s vision. Obama’s goal is achievable but not when such programs are consistently under attack by state and federal legislators who have only one objective: to defeat and humiliate the U.S. president. This is Wente’s objective with respect to McGuinty, who is also facing resistance but has actually delivered so much more: 20,000-plus green jobs, and counting. Is that a failure? Wente mentions that job count, but she doesn’t directly call it a failure, preferring instead to breeze over results in Ontario and focus on negative outcomes in the U.S. market.

Maybe he should take a look at Spain, which also set out to become the solar-power capital of the world. Everything went fine, so long as the subsidies kept flowing. But when the world economy went south, the Spanish government couldn’t afford them any more and pulled the plug. Bye, bye solar, and bye, bye jobs. By one reckoning, Spain spent half a million euros for each green job it created.

The moral of the story is as clear as a row of giant wind turbines on the horizon. Governments that invest in risky, expensive and unproven technologies will probably lose big. The only way they are able to lure private investment is with generous subsidies and long-term contracts. And even then, the failure rate is high. Ontario has already attracted its share of “suitcase” companies that are here so long as the money flows, and not a moment longer. And when they go belly-up, guess who’s stuck with the bills?

It’s predictable that Wente again trots out the Spanish example, which she also used in her wind-bashing column a year earlier. It’s the only example she can really offer up, largely because Spain’s solar market did in fact go through troubles and it is one cautionary tale that’s worth learning from. However, Spain is not representative of the market and its health. Wente neglects to mention countries that are thriving, how quickly solar costs are falling, how worldwide investment in solar continues to grow at a healthy pace, and how Ontario solar manufacturers are saying they can deal with a 30 per cent reduction in the feed-in-tariff rate as part of a plan to eventually eliminate incentives. No question Ontario could have done a better job executing its green-energy programs, and while there may be the occasional dud along the way, what this province is doing is investing in a future that Wente apparently can’t see or appreciate, or maybe doesn’t want.

By the way, to call solar and wind and electric vehicles “unproven” technology is, well, wrong. This stuff works, and it works well. It’s no less proven than the iPhone or BlackBerry Wente carries on her hip. Is it risky? Yes, because the deck is stacked against it and folks like Wente don’t make it any easier. But risk is also a matter of perception. I mean, drilling deep in the Gulf of Mexico or North Sea is risky, and so is investing in the oil sands, and so is sending people deep underground to mine for coal.

Anyway, none of this is going to change Wente’s mind. But I do expect better journalism from her, at least on this issue. And I do expect the editors of the Globe and Mail to challenge unsubstantiated claims, even if they come from columnists.

Now, there’s no doubt the province could do A LOT more to promote conservation, and the Liberals deserve a wooden spoon to the back of the head for not pushing and supporting it more and, apparently, having no significant plans to do so. I also think we can avoid the need for new nuclear in this province. Regarding the existing fleet, we have to be very careful. Nuclear currently supplies about half of the electricity in this province. If we’re going to reduce our dependence on it, it will be a weaning process that will depend on the health of other generation assets and their ability to supply the grid reliably. There may be some wiggle room, but at a time when we’re phasing out coal we’re going to need most of those nuclear assets whether we like them or not. Refurbishments will be necessary, but should certainly be scrutinized — not assumed — keeping in mind we can’t afford to put unnecessary strain on the system. We need to stay focused on getting rid of coal, and doing it right.

In other news, the Liberals have been making some clever and necessary moves to defend its green energy and green economy plan, and by association the jobs and industry it has created, should they lose an election to the PC Party in October. On Tuesday, it was revealed that Energy Minister Brad Duguid had issued a ministerial directive that alters the rules of the feed-in-tariff program, eliminating the Ontario Power Authority’s right to cancel a FIT contract if a developer does not yet have a Notice to Proceed to construction.

To obtain a Notice to Proceed, developers must have all permits and approvals, including all project impact assessments, a renewable energy approval from the Ministry of Environment, a plan that verifies that all domestic content requirements have been met, and a financing plan that demonstrates the developer has the money in place to build the project as envisioned. The PCs, if they were to form the government, have indicated they would exercise their rights under Sections 2.4 (a), (e) and (f) of FIT contracts to terminate contracts in cases where developers had not yet obtained a Notice to Proceed. Now, there would be a penalty to this — the government would have to cover any pre-construction development costs. But Hudak and crew have said they’re willing to take that hit.

This would create a huge problem for the FIT program, because more than 1,800 FIT contracts would be at risk of being cancelled and at no fault to the developers. Many, including Samsung, have a contract in hand but are waiting for grid capacity or to receive their renewable energy approval from the environment ministry. To protect this group, the Liberals tweaked the rules. Now, those developer can request a waiver that takes away the power authority’s right to terminate a project, as long as that developer can show a domestic content plan supported by a manufacturing equipment agreement. Developers must still submit a financing plan and receive all permits and approvals before they can begin construction, but the absence of these are no longer an opening for contract termination.

The end result is that it salvages whatever confidence is left in the industry since Hudak announced his intention to scrap the FIT program. Renewable energy developers and manufacturers in the province are still worried, but less so now. The Liberals also announced improvements to the renewable energy approvals (REA) process that will see applications dealt with more quickly, so that should bring some more certainty as well.

Samsung is among those less worried. In fact, it was announced yesterday that the government has given Samsung a one-year extension to fulfill certain contractual obligations. But Samsung had to give a little to get a little. In exchange for the extension, Samsung agreed to accept a lower economic adder, which is the amount it expects to received on top of normal feed-in-tariff rates for bringing jobs and manufacturing to the province. Specifically, Samsung’s adder over the 20-year life of its contract has been reduced to $110 million from $437 million. This is good for ratepayers, relatively speaking, but in my opinion the FIT rates alone should be enough to make Samsung happy — so the Korean giant is walking away with this new contractual arrangement quite satisfied. But a deal is a deal, right?

The good news in all of this is that the Liberals are starting to put up a fight, and that will increase confidence in the sector and send a message to the public that green energy in Ontario is something worth fighting for. It has been a long time coming, though decisions like killing offshore wind projects have already hurt confidence in the sector. The Liberals will have a very difficult time regaining what it lost.

My own beef with the February moratorium is that the government cited environmental concerns that were supposedly addressed in a previous round of studies done prior to the lifting of the last ban in January 2008. At that time, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced that environmental studies had been done and, in his mind, “you can do it in a way that does not compromise ecosystems.” At that point, he fired a starting gun for industry and, to stimulate interest even further, the government included offshore wind in its feed-in-tariff program. Three years later — i.e. this past February — the plug was pulled once again. Turns out Ontario was jerking the industry’s chain.

Now, I can understand the desire to pull back a bit. One could easily argue that the government moved too fast by including offshore wind in the feed-in-tariff program. But why completely halt all development, indefinitely, especially when jurisdictions such as Ohio are pushing ahead? Why go so far as to tell all developers that if and when offshore wind is put back into play, they have to start from scratch (effectively rendering all past site-specific research and studies useless)? It made no sense.

Anyway, as you’ll read in the column, I think the government needs to reconsider its decision. Perhaps a way back into it is to start by focusing on a pilot project, maybe 50 to 100 MW in size, developed far enough offshore that it wouldn’t get the NIMBYs all worked up. This could be the basis of real-world study, during which new rules can be set making a distinction between near-shore and truly offshore resources, and bringing clarity to a new market craving guidance.

To simply sit back and let U.S. jurisdictions take the lead — and future manufacturing and job creation — isn’t fitting of a province with the most to gain from offshore wind development in the Great Lakes, and the most to offer.

Hamilton, energy and technology writer for the Toronto Star, examines some of the latest, most far-out green energy innovations and the people behind them. How far-out? Take, for example, a retired engineer’s idea to produce electricity via an artificial tornado, or a plan for a space-based power station that would harvest the sun’s energy, using microwaves to beam it down to earth. Other gizmos and processes seem more amenable to commercial success and social acceptance: Hamilton tells of a secretive company called EEStor that claims to have made a breakthrough in energy storage, and of a team building a low-cost nuclear fusion reactor. He strikes a fine balance between hope and hard realism when considering barriers to energy transition. As the “tornado guy” says, upon considering financial and regulatory obstacles: “Holy crap, that’s a lot to get through.” VERDICT: Mad Like Tesla is easy to get through, even for readers with only a basic knowledge of energy issues. Hamilton makes complex technologies comprehensible, and he clearly enjoys the remarkable human stories behind the science. Many of the risk takers and visionaries portrayed are Canadian (rocker Neil Young makes a cameo appearance!), but this book’s strong appeal should transcend all borders.

Can’t complain with that. The book is scheduled for public release on Sept. 1 and is already available for pre-order on a number of sites, including Amazon.com/Amazon.ca and Indigo.ca. The book won’t break the bank, either. We decided to do paperback release on first run to make the book more accessible to a larger audience. You can likely pick it up for $13 or so. I built a Web site I’m not entirely happy with, so plan to have a newly designed site finished by the end of August. Stay tuned!

This is particularly crucial if we are to responsibly tap into the vast wind resources located in offshore locations. Going offshore offers the ability to harness much stronger and more consistent winds with larger and higher performing machines, but it also makes it more difficult to do maintenance and repairs. Most onshore wind turbines of 2 or 3 megawatts in size have gearboxes to match the slower turbine rotor speed with the high speeds of its internal generator. Gearboxes, by design, have more moving parts and therefore need regular maintenance. They’re also more prone to malfunction. This is okay when onshore, because it’s easier to access the turbines for repair. Offshore, it’s not so easy. It costs tremendous amounts of money to rent barges that will take repair crews to these remotely located turbines, and that’s assuming the weather is cooperating.

Some turbine manufacturers — Siemens, Enercon, Goldwind, Alstom — are now making direct-drive turbines, meaning no gearboxes. They’re less complex, have fewer moving parts, so are more reliable. Problem is, they’re super heavy. For direct drive you need to have a generator that can pump out the same amount of power at a much lower speed of operation, meaning you have to build a larger generator that has more surface area for the permanent magnets inside to sweep across the stator coils (a movement that induces current in the coils). This means more magnets, meaning much more weight and an increased reliance on rare-earth materials.

So, while direct-drive is ideal for offshore locations because of lower need for maintenance, getting to machines that are 10 MW in size will create generators that are simply too heavy to be economically deployed. One solution being explored, as you’ll read in my Technology Review piece, is to use superconductivity technology that creates super powerful and efficient electromagnets. This will eliminate the need for permanent magnets and therefore rare-earth materials, and it will create a much more powerful magnetic field at a fraction of the weight of conventional direct-drive designs. Both GE Global Research and Advanced Magnet Labs, two of six recipients of DOE funding for research in this area, believe they can make direct-drive wind turbine generators with a 10 MW capacity but weighing only 70 or so tons. A conventional direct-drive generator would weight over 250 tons.

Anyway, it’s all interesting stuff. At the moment, there are commercial direct-drive designs out there ranging from 6 to 10 MW in size. Siemens just announced its 6 MW version in June. But whether those can be manufactured and deployed on a large scale economically is still unclear. Something new will be needed to crack this new barrier for wind, and while it might not come this decade, it will come.