Abstract
This chapter presents a novel concept for utilising offshore-floating wind turbines to concurrently exploit cold deep sea water (DSW) for large-scale cooling applications, as well as electricity production. This concept utilises wind turbine-driven pumps that extract cold DSW and pump it across a high-pressure pipeline to a land-based hydroelectric power station coupled to a centralised air-conditioning (AC) unit of a district cooling system. The wind-driven intermittent supply of cold water exiting the hydroelectric station is diverted to the condenser of the unit and mixed with sea surface water (SSW) to maintain a steady flow. The use of DSW lowers the condensation temperature of the refrigerant in the AC unit, resulting in an improved coefficient of performance for cooling conditions. This chapter investigates the potential application of the concept described above to four European deep offshore sites located in the Mediterranean Sea: the Greek Islands, Malta, the South of France and Spain. The numerical model used to compute the energy yield characteristics at these sites assumes a single offshore wind turbine system with modules for the wind turbine–pump assembly, the deep sea thermocline formations and the frictional/thermal losses across the pipeline and the hydroelectric turbine. Another module is dedicated to the thermodynamic refrigeration cycle for the AC unit. The study confirmed that although the losses incurred in transmitting energy from offshore wind turbines through the DSW pipeline are larger than those for conventional wind turbines relying on electrical cables, such losses may be partially or fully compensated for by the superior performance of the wind turbine-driven hydraulic pumps at high wind speeds and by the energy savings incurred in AC plants through DSW utilisation. The latter savings were found to be the highest for the Greek Islands due to favourable wind conditions also prevailing during the hot summer months.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) (2013) Deep water—The next step for offshore wind energy. July
Diepeveen N (2013) On the application of fluid power transmission in offshore wind turbines. Delft University of Technology, Delft, Ph. D. Thesis
Laguna AJ (2014) Fluid power network for centralised electricity generation in offshore wind farms. J Phys: Conf Ser—Sci Mak Torque Wind. 524:1–10. http://iopscience.iop.org/1742–6596/524/1/012075 (Copenhagen)
Jones JA, Bruce A, Lam AS (2013) Advanced performance hydraulic wind energy. IEEE Green Technologies Conference, Denver, April
Sant T, Farrugia RN (2013) Performance modelling of an offshore floating wind turbine-driven deep sea water extraction system for combined power and thermal energy production: a case study in a central Mediterranean context. In: Proceedings of the ASME 32nd international conference on ocean, offshore and Arctic engineering. Nantes, June. doi:10.1115/OMAE2013–10714
Buhagiar D, Sant T (2014) Steady-state analysis of a conceptual offshore wind turbine driven electricity and thermocline energy extraction plant. Renew Energy 68:853–867
Sant T, Buhagiar D, Farrugia RN (2014) Offshore floating wind turbine-driven deep sea water pumping for combined electrical power and district cooling. J Phys: Conf Ser—Sci Mak Torque Wind 524 (Copenhagen)
NCEP Reanalysis 2 data provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA. http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/. Accessed May 2014
European wind resources map. (2015) http://www.wasp.dk/Wind-Atlas/European-Wind-Atlas/European-Wind-Atlas_VI. Accessed June 2015
Farrugia RN, Sant T (2013) Mediterranean inshore wind resources: combining MCPs and CFD for marine resource quantification. Wind Eng 37(3):243–256
WindPRO Ver. 2.7 http://www.emd.dk/WindPRO/Frontpage, EMD International A/S Niels Jernes Vej 10, 9220 Aalborg Ø, Denmark
NODC (2012, August) NODC Live Access Server 7.3. http://data.nodc.noaa.gov/las/getUI.do. Accessed May 2014
Jonkman J, Butterfield S, Musial W, Scott G (2009) Definition of a 5-MW reference wind turbine for offshore system development. U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, CO, Technical Report
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sant, T., Farrugia, R., López-Carro, D. (2015). Coupling Floating Wind Turbines with Large- Scale Air-Conditioning Systems Through Deep Sea Water Pumping: Case Studies of System Performance in European Deep Waters. In: Sayigh, A. (eds) Renewable Energy in the Service of Mankind Vol I. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17777-9_83
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17777-9_83
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-17776-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-17777-9
eBook Packages: EnergyEnergy (R0)