To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (30992 ) 5/29/2005 5:33:08 PM From: regli Respond to of 116555 Here is a translation of the article. I'll pass on the next assignment.<g> Sea towers to reliably supply electricity wams.de Off the Irish Sea, General Electric installed a wind park that can supply 16,000 households with energy By Jan Oliver Loefken in Arklow Gusts of 80 kilometers per hour propel the gigantic rotors above the crests of the Irish Sea. The seven wind-powered devices tower above the water like 30 story buildings. After a year of tests, General Electric inaugurated the Arklow Windpark that at a rated output of 25 megawatts can supply 16,000 Irish households with electricity. The 3.6 megawatt turbines of the US conglomerate are located offshore. They are based on a sand bank at a depth of ten meters far away from the coast. South of the town Arklow, about one hour by car from Dublin, the towers look like long faints stilts in the distance. Thus after Sweden and Denmark, Ireland now goes "offshore" with its first wind park. The open sea promises more reliable and stronger winds than land-based power stations. "The Irish sea with its strong winds and huge swells was a challenge", says Mark Little, vice-president of the power station section of GE. "This project is a showcase for the wind industry and for Ireland." Though the winds are strong and constant it isn’t easy to tap this climate neutral and clean power source. Deep foundations have to withstand storms and high seas. Special submerged cables bring the generated power ashore. In order to operate it economically, the power station cannot be susceptible to defects. Maintenance on the open ocean is far more difficult and much more expensive. Therefore, technicians first have to gain experience under adverse conditions offshore. The Arklow Windpark is to serve this purpose because it is actually only a demonstration project so the operators can develop soon a 20 times larger offshore park. Together with the Irish power company Airtricity, they want to increase the output of the power station at the sand bank to altogether 520 megawatts. Permissions of the authorities are already in place and Airtricity has leased further locations on the Arklow shallows. "In the North Atlantic we have enough wind energy to supply all of Europe ", says Eddie O'Connor, Manager of Operations at Airtricity. The Arklow project is therefore only the beginning for a row of wind parks around Ireland. Only two weeks ago, US climatologists confirmed the enormous potential of wind farms on the open seas. Cristina Archer and Mark Jacobson published a global wind power map for the first time in the "Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres". The map is the result of wind-speed measurements from approximately 7,500 surface stations and 500 balloon-launch stations. They inspected regions where average wind speeds exceed force 3 or 6.9 meters per second. Only in conditions like these can wind-powered devices be operated profitably. With rotors at a height of 80 meters, only every 8th measuring station fulfills this prerequisite. The North Sea as well as the area around Cape Horn are the stormiest. However, the large oceans in North America as well as the Tasmanian Sea in Australia are also ideal locations for lucrative wind harvests. According to Archer and Jacobson, only a fraction of the usable wind energy is needed to supply the energy needs of the world. They estimate the potential at approximately 72 Terawatts. This corresponds to the output of 36,000 modern reactor blocks or 70,000 coal-fired power stations.