Advantages and challenges of offshore wind turbines and current status and plans in Asia.

Abstract
It is evident that the worldwide demand of the renewable energy is exponentially increasing every
year due to the increased climate issues such as global warming and also the shortage and near to
end status of conventional sources of energy such as fossil fuels. Wind energy provide a clean,
efficient and good solution to fix the majority portion of this ever-growing power demand around
the globe and especially in Asia and Asia pacific which constitutes of the major section of developing
economies in the world for example China targets to produce 150 GW of energy through its offshore
wind turbine projects by 2020. As the space is becoming scarce over the time offshore wind energy,
when and where possible seems as a great alternative. This work describes, for Asia the potential of
offshore wind energy generation projects, the present status of this technology and currently
existing plans for the development of offshore wind parks. It also presents futuristic new solutions
for offshore wind energy.

Introduction
In today’s demanding world, the society needs more developed and ample of energy resources for
the future sustainability. Increasing oil prices and energy demand combined with a general
acceptance that man-made global warming is occurring commands the emergence of new energy
solutions. Wind energy is a clean and inexpensive alternative, and as space is quickly becoming
scarce for the installation of onshore wind turbines, offshore wind energy has become an
increasingly attractive option due to the enormous energy potential associated with the vast
offshore areas. Several challenges are, however, met by offshore wind energy. Higher investments in
towers, foundations and underwater cabling are needed, and installation is more difficult and
expensive offshore. As the technology is advanced into deeper water, floating wind turbine
platforms may be the most economical means for deploying offshore wind turbines at some sites.
Worldwide, the offshore wind resource has been shown to be extremely abundant.

The long-term survivability of floating structures has already been successfully demonstrated by the
marine and offshore oil industries over many decades. However, the economics that allowed the
deployment of thousands of offshore oilrigs have yet to be demonstrated for floating wind turbine
platforms. For deep water wind turbines, a floating structure may replace driven monopoles or
conventional concrete gravity bases that are commonly used as foundations for shallow. water
turbines. A floating structure must provide enough buoyancy to support the weight of the turbine
and to restrain pitch, roll and heave motions within acceptable limits. The turbine design philosophy
for floating may be impacted if platform dynamics require a more dynamically compliant machine
but the platform costs are likely to dominate the cost trade-offs.
Advantages and hurdles as compared with onshore

The number of advantages of offshore wind energy as compared to the onshore wind energy is high.
There is no noise pollution. Wind turbines while rotating emit a whirring noise which leads to the
problem of people who are living nearby. Installing wind turbines far away from the spaces of
human population or occupation completely eliminates this problem. Then there are much stronger
winds offshore which imply that there is a higher productivity that may offset higher installation and
maintenance costs. Setting wind turbines offshore eliminates the possibility of visual impact. This
helps in using and applying various designs of wind turbines which in turn improves their efficiency.
It also makes large areas available to setup colossal wind parks which in turn increases the power
generation. Also since the wind turbines are installed in seas thus there is no limit to the size of the
wind turbine that can be erected as opposed in the case of on -shore wind turbines where road
restrictions usually limit and alter the size of the wind turbines erected. Also, there is no harm to
birds since offshore wind farms are located in oceans where birds don’t fly frequently if at all which
is again opposed in case of wind turbines set on land which may cause death and injuries to the
birds. Also, these offshore wind parks could be installed near a major city or port which would thus
reduce the cost of transmission and also the losses involved in the transmission of the power.

However, several challenges are also met by the offshore wind energy which include higher capital
and labour investment in the construction, foundation and underwater cabling is required, also it’s
installation is highly difficult, tedious and expensive. Also, it is worth taking note that in the current
scenario display an estimated cost to generate power from offshore wind turbines is 2.5-3.5 times
more than the wind farms built on the land. It also includes a long planning phase along with other
environmental and engineering feasibilities also with long and tedious site specific study .