b'THE UNCONTAINEDbottom offshore wind? Is it too difficult to adaptissues, the technology, and the infrastructure fixed-bottom facilities to floating?necessary, may lag behind the development of Dagher: Its not just difficult. In some cases,floating offshore wind?its impossible. Youve got to fabricate floatingDagher: The difference between a floating turbines dockside and these units are bigger thanturbine and a fixed-bottom turbine is that the the Washington Monument. How do you get thosefloating turbine has what we call a dynamic cable. in the water? You need deep water ports. You needIt floats in a water column, has buoyancy modules, facilities that have water depths of 30 feet or more,and is fixed to the seabed. Each turbine is going because some of these will draft 25 feet. Maybeto have a dynamic cable and its typically a 66KV you could dredge some existing facilities, but thatscable. So, its not low voltage, but its not extremely a whole other project.high. Youre going to daisy chain these, one to The other thing is the fabrication methods thatthe other to the other to the other, connecting five you need for floating wind turbines are differentup to 10 turbines on one line. So, each group of from fixed bottom. You need the port facilities to10 turbines then has one of these cables coming fabricate and assemble these hulls and theyreout of it, bringing it together [with others] into an different. With fixed bottom, you typically useoffshore substation. That offshore substation then mono-piles. These are essentially 20-25 footincreases the voltage from 66KV to something diameter steel towers that you can bring [to a port]over to 200KV. And the reason we do that is you and assemble. It doesnt take the same amounthave a lot less losses in the line by having a higher of space and real estate that it takes to assemblevoltage. a floating hull, which are much bigger and muchParticularly if youre 30 miles offshore, you more complex. You need dedicated facilities thatneed a substation there that will pick up your can fabricate big hulls like that. The existing fixed- voltage and send the voltage out in one or two bottom facilities havent been designed specificallycables for the whole farm to shore. Then onshore, to do that. You will need quite a bit of acreage ifyou connect that to a control substation. you wish to build a commercial floating facility, 50So, the technology for these dynamic to 100 acres and more, depending on what you are66KV cables already exists. The technology for trying to do.the offshore export cable already exists. The AJOT: Because the hull is made of concrete, istechnology called the inner array cable that daisy one advantage that it can be fabricated in Maine orchains the cables to get the turbines together wherever?already exists. What doesnt exist today is the high Dagher: It certainly could be fabricated locally.voltage dynamic cable from a floating substation We want a technology that creates local jobs, andto the ground, and thats being worked on as we thats really why we went to the concrete hull, wespeak. Thats what is left. have no ability to mass produce these hulls at this time. And thats why we went in that direction, right? The first of the concrete hulls we have are less expensive. AJOT: Are you concerned that transmission[fig 2.]Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Power MonthlyAnnual U.S. electricity generating capacity and generation (19902021)net summer capacity net generationgigawatts million megawatthours500 natural 2,000Millionsgas400 natural 1,500 gas300coal 1,000 coal200 wind nuclearnuclear 500 wind100 hydro- hydro-electric electricother solar0 solar 0 other1990 2000 2010 2020 1990 2000 2010 202021'