Category Archives: Offshore

Trump and Zinke Must Disavow Plans to Re-Create Troubled Offshore Drilling Agency Common Dreams WASHINGTON - Today's Bloomberg News report that President Donald Trump and U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke are considering re-creating the ineffectual and corrupt structure of America's offshore oil drilling regulator would be a disaster for ... and more »

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Trump and Zinke Must Disavow Plans to Re-Create Troubled Offshore Drilling Agency - Common Dreams

Published on June 8th, 2017 | by Joshua S Hill

June 8th, 2017 by Joshua S Hill

MHI Vestas Offshore Wind has unveiled the next iteration in its V164 wind turbine series, a 9.5 megawatt turbine that is larger than the giant London Eye ferris wheel.

Only four months after the company unveiled its 9 megawatt (MW) wind turbine, MHI Vestas (the resulting collaboration between parent companies Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Vestas Wind Systems) unveiled the latest V164 wind turbine, the V164-9.5 MW. This currently ranks as the most powerful serially-produced wind turbine in the world, according to MHI Vestas, with massive 80-meter blades that result in a swept area of 21,124 meters-squared, larger than the London Eye.

OneV164-9.5 MW wind turbine alone could power 8,300 UK homes.

As a leader in the offshore wind industry, we are committed to lowering the cost of energy through innovative turbine technology, said Jens Tommerup, CEO of MHI Vestas. The launch of our V164-9.5 MW turbine is a testament to that leadership and to the ingenuity of our engineers and technicians. The V164-9.5 MW is built on the industry-leading V164 platform, the most powerful platform in operation. Just one single turbine is now capable of powering more than 8,300 UK homes.

MHI Vestas V164-8 MW wind turbines are already in operationat the258 MW Burbo Bank Extension offshore wind farm, located off the coast of Liverpool, in England, and will be installed at the370 MWNorther offshore wind power plant in Belgium.

Im very proud of our team for their hard work in launching our next generation turbine, the V164-9.5 MW, added Torben Hvid Larsen, Chief Technology Officer at MHI Vestas. With only minimal design changes, including a redesigned gearbox and cooling system upgrades, this turbine continues the legacy of the proven V164 platform and is available now to all MHI Vestas customers.

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Tags: MHI Vestas, MHI Vestas Offshore Wind, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, V164, V164-9.5 MW, Vestas Wind Systems

Joshua S Hill I'm a Christian, a nerd, a geek, and I believe that we're pretty quickly directing planet-Earth into hell in a handbasket! I also write for Fantasy Book Review (.co.uk), and can be found writing articles for a variety of other sites. Check me out at about.me for more.

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MHI Vestas Offshore Unveils 9.5 Megawatt Wind Turbine - CleanTechnica

Germany, Belgium, Denmark, and a body of 25 energy companies have signed a pledge to increase Europes offshore wind capacity by a whopping five times over the next decade. This unprecedented push should not only supply the continent with ample clean energy, but also drive the price of offshore wind down in the future, making it more than competitive with fossil fuels.

Middelgrunden offshore wind farm off the shore of Copenhagen, Denmark. Image credits Lars Plougmann / Flickr.

Plopping wind farms offshore is one of those things that just makes perfect sense: its both easier and cheaper to install turbines at sea than on mountains,it doesnt use up valuable real estate driving installation prices even lower, all making for avery price competitive power source. While still controversial in the US, offshore wind has its roots firmly set down in Europe and many countries on the old continent are aggressively developing the technology. Because of this, offshore wind became one of the most efficient and fastest growing energy markets and its only going to get better.

Thats becauseGermany, Belgium, and Denmark have joined 25 high profile European energy companies, such as Dong Energy and Siemens Gamesa, to up offshore wind generation to a huge60 gigawattsin the next decade to put things into perspective, Europes current total offshore wind capacity totals roughly 13 gigawatts. Thats 4gigawatts a year, amounting to an almost fivefold increase over the next ten years.

But unlike the power these turbines will churn out, the announcement doesnt come out of the blue. The pledge comes hot on the heels of plans to construct an artificial island with some 7,000 offshore turbines in the North Sea by 2050. Such ambitious projects are hoped to start a domino effect, as the experience and efficiency gained from the works will slash installation prices around the world, making offshore turbines even more attractive (and more importantly, affordable) for other countries.

Existing European offshore windprojects have already lowered costs by 48%overthe last two years, and the technology is projected to become very competitive with new fossil fuel generators (such as natural gas power) by 2030.

With this Joint Statement, said Giles Dickson, chief executive officer of industry group WindEurope, leading businesses and governments are taking the next step by committing to cooperate on the deployment of big volumes for offshore wind energy.

The project ties into Europes efforts to develop low-carbon electricity generation systems to meet its emission reduction targets a 40% slash compared with 1990 levels by 2030 and its leaders are gambling that if theypave the way, other countries will follow suit in a bid to reach their own Paris pledges.

And given that WindEuropeestimatesthat about one quarter of the EUs electricity demand could be supplied via offshore wind for an average cost of54 euros/megawatt hour in the most favorable locations, were likely going to see a lot more of these turbines in the future.

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Germany, Belgium, Denmark, pledge to quintuple the EU's offshore wind in a decade - ZME Science

TAIPEI Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, the world's largest contract chipmaker, said on Thursday it will consider sites in Taiwan before offshore options when it decides the location of a multi-billion dollar foundry early next year.

The Taiwan government is helping the company find the ideal location for an advanced technology 3-nanometer chip plant, it added.

"We do not exclude locations in other countries, but a Taiwan location will be our first consideration," acting spokeswoman Elizabeth Sun told reporters on the sidelines of a shareholders' meeting.

The plan comes at a time when other tech heavyweights, like Taiwan's Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, which goes by the trade name of Foxconn, and Japan's SoftBank Group Corp, look to deepen investment in their U.S. businesses. This follows Donald Trump's presidential win last year, built on a campaign promise to boost American manufacturing and jobs.

TSMC Chairman Morris Chang said in January he would not rule out a U.S. plant but added that such a move would involve sacrifices for both the company and consumers, pointing to the benefits of being able to shift engineers across the firm's Taiwan factories.

TSMC, a major supplier to Apple Inc, has also flagged plans for the development of 5-nanometer chip plant. A Taiwan location for that factory is under environmental review, Sun said.

The contract chipmaker's plans for new plants come in the wake of record sales and profits last year and an upbeat outlook for 2017 as the shift to mobile computing creates robust global demand for its products.

"This year should also be a pretty good year. Our stock price is very, very good and healthy," Chang told shareholders on Thursday.

The stock closed up 0.7 percent at a record high to value the firm at T$5.52 trillion ($184 billion), boosted by Chang's comments and as shareholders approved a cash dividend of T$7 for 2016, up from T$6 a year earlier.

Its shares have climbed steadily over the past seven years and this year it surpassed Intel Corp in market value.

Chang played down TSMC's decision to pull out of the race for Toshiba Corp's highly prized chip business, saying after 6-7 weeks of intense deliberation earlier this year, the company decided the acquisition didn't fit with its strategy.

"This kind of opportunity will be there in the future," he told shareholders.

Toshiba aims to name the buyer for its $18 bln chips business next week, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

(Reporting by Jess Macy Yu and J.R. Wu; Additional reporting by Murali Anantharaman; Editing by Sam Holmes and Edwina Gibbs)

BRUSSELS The European Union wants to make it easier for law enforcement authorities to get electronic evidence directly from tech companies, such as Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc's Google, even when stored in another European country.

BEIJING Alibaba Group Holding Ltd expects revenue growth of 45-49 percent in the 2018 fiscal year, said Chief Financial Officer Maggie Wu on Thursday during an investor conference in Hangzhou, China.

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TSMC will consider Taiwan sites ahead of offshore ones for new foundry - Reuters

June 7 Paragon Offshore Plc:

* Paragon Offshore announces confirmation of restructuring plan

* Paragon Offshore announces confirmation of restructuring plan

* Paragon Offshore Plc - Paragon is planning for its emergence from chapter 11 in early july

* Paragon Offshore Plc - in confirming plan, bankruptcy court overruled all objections raised at confirmation

* Paragon Offshore - under consensual plan, co's existing equity will be deemed worthless

* Paragon Offshore-bankruptcy court approved co's consensual plan of reorganization under chapter 11 of U.S. Bankruptcy code that co announced on may 2

* Paragon Offshore Plc - under consensual plan, company's secured creditors and unsecured bondholders will receive equity in a new reorganized parent co Source text for Eikon: Further company coverage:

June 8 BlackRock Inc said on Thursday it hired Goldman Sachs' Heather Brownlie as its U.S. head of fixed-income ETFs.

LONDON, June 9 Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon said the results of the election were disappointing for her party but were disastrous for Prime Minister Theresa May.

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BRIEF-Paragon Offshore reports confirmation of restructuring plan - Reuters

Offshore company requirements for US citizens

The US government has some tight restrictions on offshore companies.

As a US citizen, youll need to disclose any interest in an offshore corporation on your taxes each year. The same goes for any offshore bank accounts you are an owner of or signer on, in most cases.

Failure to comply with these rules in the US (or any other western country that requires them) can lead to steep penalties. You can reduce taxes with an offshore corporation, but you wont benefit from a low tax if you get whacked with penalties and fees.

Tax deferment is one way for offshore companies to reduce taxes. The system in place lets you defer the taxes that will be imposed upon your company indefinitely.

You can take the money youre no longer putting towards taxes and reinvest it in your company. You wont have to pay these taxes off until you sell the company.

If youve been deferring taxes for a number of years, and using those funds to either continue to build your business or invest otherwise, you will be coming out far ahead of those who never start an offshore company. Try as those homebodies might to reduce taxes, tax-free compound interest from your offshore company will blow their onshore earnings out of the water.

Remember those bad blogs and articles from earlier? Well, offshore corporation misinformation isnt the only thing you need to be wary of

There are plenty of cheap start an offshore company service providers advertising on the internet. They offer the lowest price and the best results. Oxymorons.

Unless youre an African warlord, youll want to steer clear of these service providers. Flouting the law, avoiding and ignoring sound legal and tax adviceIf thats your M.O, the lowest-priced provider will get you set up in no time (I mean, maybethere are plenty of scams out there).

And while the process of forming an offshore corporation is straightforward (and can be done in a matter of minutes, in some countries), laying the proper groundwork before and after the official process is important.

You need to consult with a provider who understands the rules and regulations in your home country, which most so-called lawyers on some deserted island have no idea how to handle (since most of them are just deflated volleyballs with painted-on faces).

The best thing you can do is choose the right representative. Overpaying a little up front is a no-brainer when it comes to your peace of mind down the line. The next step after reduce taxes shouldnt be reduce jail time. Youre asking for trouble if you dont vet these cheap offshore corporation services before buying in.

Once your offshore company is approved and set up, the next step is to open a bank account (and possibly an offshore merchant account).

Whether or not youll have to physically travel to the bank depends on a few things, including where your company is incorporated, your nationality, and where you intend to bank.

But dont let that turn you off. The most important first step towards an offshore corporation is to simply take action. The sooner you get your business set up, the sooner you can enjoy the benefits. And it can be a life-changing processWhat other process lets you reduce taxes, insulate your assets from turmoil, and keep greedy hands away from your hard-earned assets?

Look, if youre serious about starting an offshore company, I might be able to help.

Every month I personally help five people build their own Nomad Capitalist lifestarting an offshore company, getting a second passport, opening an offshore bank accountwhatever they need to build more wealth and live a life with more freedom and success.

If youre ready to stop spending your time (and money) reading article after article on offshore companies, you might be ready for my help. Be honest with yourself, here.

If youre committed to pursuing the Nomad Capitalist lifestyle, then you should fill out this application. If my team and I decide youre a good fit, the next step is a phone call with me.

This isnt a free consultation, and this isnt a sales call where I try and convince you to do something you dont want to do.

I dont work with you unless youre already convinced this lifestyle is for you, and youre 150% committed to making it happen.

Your phone call will confirm that youre qualified for my services and that I can help you achieve your goals. When the call checks out, we get to work.

By the way, at five people a month, Im not cheap to work with (I dont need to be, and you shouldnt need me to be, either). If youre looking for the best spot to bury your gold, or a soapbox to spout your anarchist rhetoric, or a week to think it over then youre probably in the wrong place, and I cant help you.

Still interested? Lets see if I can help.

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Offshore Company: How a foreign corporation can reduce ...

Offshore wind giant Dong Energy has become the first to plug an offshore wind farm into a battery system to store power to be used as needed.

The world-first hybrid system has powered up on the Merseyside coast to store electricity generated from the first phase of Dong Energys 90 megawatt (MW) Burbo Bank wind farm in order to help to balance the frequency of the power grid.

The new 2MW battery system helps to combat criticism that renewable power could lead to flickering light bulbs, or even blackouts, by disrupting the normal power grid frequency of around 50 hertz.

Richard Smith, National Grids head of networks, said the system operator plans to call on Dong Energy to release electricity into the grid to help stabilise the frequency.

"I'm looking forward to seeing how the Dong Energy solution of storage connected to the offshore wind farm will provide services to help us respond to day-to-day operational challenges," he said.

Benj Sykes, Dong Energys UK boss, told The Telegraph last month that battery storage technology is a game changer for the booming offshore wind market.

Mr Sykes was speaking ahead of the launch of the second phase of the Burbo Bank offshore wind project which uses the worlds largest operating wind turbines to produce almost 260MW of power.

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Dong Energy plugs offshore wind farm into world-first battery system - Telegraph.co.uk

Danish wind manufacturer MHI Vestas launched a 9.5-megawatt offshore turbine this week. The machine is an upgrade from the company's 9-megawatt model released earlier this year.

In January, Vestas reported that its new machine -- an 8-megawatt-capacity turbine that can be uprated to 9 megawatts at certain sites -- generated216,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in one day. That was a record for any commercial offshore wind turbine, according to the company.

Vestas also says its 9.5-megawatt model, which features blades that are 80 meters long, can produce enough electricity to power more than 8,000 U.K homes.

"With only minimal design changes, including a redesigned gearbox and cooling system upgrades, this turbine continues the legacy of the proven V164 platform and is available now to all MHI Vestas customers," saidTorben Hvid Larsen, the company's chief technology officer,in a statement.

Vestas is at the leading edge of turbine design. Windpower Monthly has a list of the biggest turbines on the market today. The Vestas V164 8-megawatt model topped the rankings.

In less than a year, the V164platform was expanded to 9.5 megawatts.

Manufacturers are regularly developing turbines rated in the 5- to 8-megawatt range. Some are already looking beyond 10-megawatt designs -- and researchers are even toying with the idea of 50-megawatt capacity turbines.

"For many years, 3- to 4-megawatt turbines were standard; now 8- to 10-megawatt models are common, and by 2024, 13- to 15-megawatt models will likely hit the market," wrote McKinsey researchersin a recent analysison the economics of offshore wind.

"This reduces the cost per megawatt. Even as turbines have become larger, they have also become better. In the 1990s, the expected lifetime of offshore wind parks was only 15 years; now it is closer to 25 years, and new sites project an operational lifetime of 30 years."

Meanwhile, energy supermajors are looking to use those mega-turbines to build out mega-projects.

Shell said this week it is eyeing 10-gigawatt offshore wind parks, according to Recharge News.

We believe that a few large, integrated projects up to 10 gigawatts, with an anchor tenant who takes the biggest risk for about half the project, need to be developed to ensure we all learn how best to do this" saidMark Gainsborough, the executive vice president of Shell New Energies, speaking at a European offshore wind conference.

Shell has an equity stake in half a dozen offshore wind farms around the world. In December, it partnered with Mitsubishi and a group of Danish companies to develop a 700-megawatt offshore project.

What's driving wind technology change? Listen to our Interchange episode with Ryan Wiser, who discusses the evolution of turbine size and applications.

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Vestas Launches 9.5-Megawatt Offshore Wind Turbine; Shell Looks ... - Greentech Media

June 7, 2017 Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Offshore wind turbines built according to current standards may not be able to withstand the powerful gusts of a Category 5 hurricane, creating potential risk for any such turbines built in hurricane-prone areas, new University of Colorado Boulder-led research shows.

The study, which was conducted in collaboration with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado and the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, highlights the limitations of current turbine design and could provide guidance for manufacturers and engineers looking to build more hurricane-resilient turbines in the future.

Offshore wind-energy development in the U.S. has ramped up in recent years, with projects either under consideration or already underway in most Atlantic coastal states from Maine to the Carolinas, as well as the West Coast and Great Lakes. The country's first utility-scale offshore wind farm, consisting of five turbines, began commercial operation in December 2016 off the coast of Rhode Island.

Turbine design standards are governed by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). For offshore turbines, no specific guidelines for hurricane-force winds exist. Offshore turbines can be built larger than land-based turbines, however, owing to a manufacturer's ability to transport larger molded components such as blades via freighter rather than over land by rail or truck.

For the study, CU Boulder researchers set out to test the limits of the existing design standard. Due to a lack of observational data across the height of a wind turbine, they instead used large-eddy simulations to create a powerful hurricane with a computer.

"We wanted to understand the worst-case scenario for offshore wind turbines, and for hurricanes, that's a Category 5," said Rochelle Worsnop, a graduate researcher in CU Boulder's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (ATOC) and lead author of the study.

These uniquely high-resolution simulations showed that under Category 5 conditions, mean wind speeds near the storm's eyewall reached 90 meters-per-second, well in excess of the 50 meters-per-second threshold set by current standards.

"Wind speeds of this magnitude have been observed in hurricanes before, but in only a few cases, and these observations are often questioned because of the hazardous conditions and limitations of instruments," said George Bryan of NCAR and a co-author of the study. "By using large-eddy simulations, we are able to show how such winds can develop and where they occur within hurricanes."

Furthermore, current standards do not account for veer, a measure of the change in wind direction across a vertical span. In the simulation, wind direction changed by as much as 55 degrees between the tip of the rotor and its hub, creating a potentially dangerous strain on the blade.

The findings could be used to help wind farm developers improve design standards as well as to help stakeholders make informed decisions about the costs, benefits and risks of placing turbines in hurricane-prone areas.

"The study will help inform design choices before offshore wind energy development ramps up in hurricane-prone regions," said Worsnop, who received funding from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program to conduct this research. "We hope that this research will aid wind turbine manufacturers and developers in successfully tapping into the incredibly powerful wind resource just beyond our coastlines."

"Success could mean either building turbines that can survive these extreme conditions, or by understanding the overall risk so that risks can be mitigated, perhaps with financial instruments like insurance," said Professor Julie Lundquist of ATOC and CU Boulder's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI), a co-author of the study. "The next stage of this work would be to assess how often these extreme winds would impact an offshore wind farm on the Atlantic coast over the 20-to-30-year lifetime of a typical wind farm."

The findings were recently published online in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, a publication of the American Geophysical Union.

Explore further: Utility plans vote on New York offshore wind project

More information: Rochelle P. Worsnop et al, Gusts and Shear Within Hurricane Eyewalls Can Exceed Offshore Wind-Turbine Design Standards, Geophysical Research Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1002/2017GL073537

A New York utility is set to vote later this month on a plan to construct an offshore wind farm off eastern Long Island.

There has been a hiccup at the nation's first offshore wind farm as it prepares to start delivering power.

Local authorities approved the largest offshore wind farm in the United States on Wednesday, to be located near Long Island and capable of powering some 50,000 households.

For the past 24 years, Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, has been developing a complex computer model to study air pollution, energy, weather and climate. A recent application ...

(Tech Xplore)A small team of researchers with Sorbonne Universit and cole Nationale Suprieure des Arts et Mtiers-ParisTech has found that using flexible blades on a wind turbine can dramatically increase its efficiency. ...

A new design for gigantic blades longer than two football fields could help bring offshore 50-megawatt (MW) wind turbines to the United States and the world.

Rising seas are making flooding more common in coastal areas around the country. Now, a new study finds that sea-level rise will boost the occurrence of moderate rather than severe flooding in some regions of the United States, ...

Using seismic data and supercomputers, Rice University geophysicists have conducted a massive seismic CT scan of the upper mantle beneath the Tibetan Plateau and concluded that the southern half of the "Roof of the World" ...

Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) have found that independent estimates from geology and biology agree on the timing of the breakup of the Pangaea supercontinent into today's continents.

Offshore wind turbines built according to current standards may not be able to withstand the powerful gusts of a Category 5 hurricane, creating potential risk for any such turbines built in hurricane-prone areas, new University ...

India is now two and a half times more likely to experience a deadly heat wave than a half century ago, and all it took was an increase in the average temperature of just 0.5 degrees Celsius (less than 1 degree Fahrenheit), ...

Scientists at The University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) have found that a devastating combination of global warming and El Nio is responsible for causing extreme temperatures in April 2016 in Southeast Asia.

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I think Al Gore said storms will get bigger in the future so what do we do, build the most vulnerable power system to storms, brilliant !!

Is there any type of power plant that isn't vulnerable to category 5 eye wall winds?

I am not generally a proponent of building "better technology" on a never ending scale to deal with problems the existing technology has caused since the newer technology tends to create problems of it's own. In this case I fervently hope to be proven incorrect. Since we are not wise enough of a species to greatly reduce the number of our species we will simply have to make do with structures that can handle the situational stresses we have created or excacerbated.

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Offshore wind turbines vulnerable to Category 5 hurricane gusts - Phys.Org

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DONG Energy to Incorporate Batteries Into UK Offshore Wind Farm ... - New York Times