Germany Putting More Wind Into Energy

Germany is blowing more wind into energy with the setting up of new offshore facilities. Germany already has the world’s largest installed capacity for wind energy.

By the end of this year, German researchers will have installed a new facility in the North Sea, some 80 km west of the island of Sylt. The experimental facility will provide crucial data on conditions a wind turbine must satisfy to function efficiently on the high seas.
The new facility, Fino 3, will allow researchers to measure the ideal dimensions of a wind turbine installed on the high seas, the strength of its anchoring, its impact on sea and seabed activity, and weather risks.

Two other Fino research facilities are already installed in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Fino, German abbreviation for ‘Research and Development Stations on the North and Baltic Sea’, is a joint venture of the technical universities of Kiel and Braunschweig, and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research.

Fino 1 and 2 are analysing the effects of wind turbines on sea flora and fauna.

“Fino 3 has been designed to stand up to 18-metre-high sea waves,” Jan Bachmann, coordinator of the research project at the Kiel university, some 450 km northwest of Berlin told IPS. “Such waves are exceptional, we expect them to happen once every 50 years.”

IPS