Principle Power floats idea of Pacific Ocean wind power

[depakid]

GARIBALDI -- The fishermen are nervous. About a dozen sit around a U-shaped table in a meeting room at Garibaldi's Comfort Inn, their gaze fixed on a picture that has popped up on a PowerPoint presentation.

In the middle of a whitecapped ocean, a wind turbine rises from the waves, three blades poised like a giant whirligig. The tower base connects to an odd-looking floating foundation that, if the speaker is to be believed, signals a breakthrough technology and a powerful future for this struggling bayside town.

Immediately, the grumbling starts. What will happen to our prized crabbing grounds if scores of turbines pock our seas? What about our shrimp and tuna fisheries? And what about the visual blight for those on shore who prize their ocean vistas?

All good questions, because nobody has come close to providing the complete answers yet. The fishermen worry about hobbling their livelihoods for some pie-in-the-sky notion -- or, worse, a venture that leaves Garibaldi empty-handed while big-city types reap the benefits.

And Oregonians everywhere are likely to soon face the promise and challenge of ocean wind power as the Pacific shows its potential as an ideal wind farm setting. Garibaldi is merely the first site on the West Coast where a green, renewable generating source -- the kind now dotting eastern Oregon's open spaces -- tries to set anchor.

Alla Weinstein, a short bullet of a woman with dark curly hair and a soft, clipped way of talking, answers the questions as best she can. This is a new frontier, she says, and everyone must work together to define the outcome. "Why can't we figure out how to coexist?"

The fishermen would like to believe her. Maybe those turbine blades could whip up better fortunes for Tillamook County.

But they also feel besieged, their ocean territory increasingly chopped up to accommodate the interests of other people -- environmentalists, regulators, wave energy developers and now, perhaps, offshore wind power proponents.

"Sure, it's green and it's renewable," says Joe Ockenfels, owner of Siggi-G Ocean Charters. "But is it necessary? Is this Wall Street talking here?"

Weinstein, chief executive of the 1-year-old, Seattle-based Principle Power Inc., is convinced that she can bring hundreds of wind turbines to the deep storm-tossed waters of the West Coast and change lives -- theirs included -- for the better. No one has done what she wants to do, she admits, but that's no reason to torpedo the project before it's off the drawing board.

The fishermen aren't buying it. Why should they trust an outsider, especially this perky woman with a foreign accent? They continue the piranha treatment.

Won't anchor lines damage the seabed, and won't stirred-up sands alter the shores? What happens when one sinks -- which is bound to happen, they insist -- given the rage of winter storms?

Don't worry, says Weinstein, warming to the standoff. The three-footed, floating foundations incorporate a system that dampens wave and wind forces and stabilizes the towers. Even in those ferocious storms predicted to occur just once in 100 years, the structures tilt just slightly, tests in wave tanks show.

"You don't know what 'extreme' is," mutters Kelley Barnett, wearing knee-high rubber boots after a day filleting tuna. "There have been three 100-year storms in the last 12 years."

More: http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2008/10/unknowns_buffet_ocean_wind.html

[Beregond2]

1. Oregonians will never go for it unless they are

invisible from shore. Looks like that means at least thirty miles. That's a lot of cable to lay. There are also hundreds of high-wind sites on land that aren't being exploited yet. People are going to want to know why we need to put more pressures on the sea environment before those have been used.

[kristopher]

2. Actually,

Because of water vapor in the air over the ocean, visibility is seldom above 6-8 miles. Under clear dry conditions at 6-8 miles you can't see the rotors and the towers looks like toothpicks. At the very most, 12 miles is as far as they need go to be out of sight.

There is little to no "pressure" on the oceanic environment from wind turbines. A much larger concern is the mercury deposition and ocean acidification from burning coal. The "high-wind" land based sites you think there are "hundreds" of are a drop in the bucket compared to what is needed and what is available offshore.

Get used to them because they are coming.