John Funk, The Plain Dealer
CLEVELAND, Ohio — Some of the world’s biggest wind developers were in Cleveland this week to talk about something none of them has ever done – building wind turbines in fresh water such as Lake Erie, where ice flows promise to pose significant problems.
A three-day national conference focusing on the business potential and the problems of freshwater wind farms drew 170 engineers, attorneys, academics and contractors. It wrapped up Wednesday.
The summit coincided with the Lake Erie Energy Development Corp.’s first ever public meeting Tuesday, co-sponsored by development group NorTech Energy Enterprise, to lay out some of the details of the proposed $100 million project involving putting five very large turbines in Lake Erie by the end of 2012. Many more hearings will be scheduled.
Lorry Wagner, president of the corporation also known as LEEDCo, told more than 300 people packed into the auditorium at the Great Lakes Science Center that he hopes to announce a developer within four weeks.
“I hope it is sooner,” Wagner said in an interview Wednesday about some of the issues raised by the public at the hearing and by the experts at the national conference at the Wyndham at Playhouse Square hosted by private conference organizer Infocast, of California.
Building the correct foundation to deal with the stresses of ice, wind and wave action will be crucial — and could be a significant part of the cost of any off-shore project, Case Western Reserve University engineering professor David Zeng told the conference.
In an interview, Zeng said building a foundation strong enough to keep a turbine centered could amount to 25 percent of the total cost, depending on what conditions must be overcome.
Zeng, who heads up the Wind Foundation Center at CWRU’s Great Lakes Energy Institute, is already testing some reinforced concrete structural parts for General Electric. GE has an agreement with LEEDCo to supply the largest turbines every used in North America, each of the five machines rated at 4 million watts, or 4 megawatts.
Ice stress could become a real problem, said Zeng, and he wants to test real pilings in the lake for one winter to see how they will do.
The trouble is that he probably won’t have the money to do that experiment until next summer, Zeng said, giving the test just one winter before LEEDCO’s ambitious construction schedule would begin.
Wagner said Zeng’s test would give the project more information but construction could be done without it, by simply overbuilding the foundation.
“If we are able to secure grant money, all of us would like to put in a test foundation next summer,” Wagner said.
Even before foundations are researched, LEEDCo has to get a better idea of what is under the lake bed.
Story Compliments Of The Plain Dealer
