Wind Blows Off-Shore

The U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) granted a lease for an offshore wind farm off the coast of Delaware to a unit of U.S. power company NRG Energy, which decided in December to put the project on hold due to financial considerations.
This was only the second offshore wind farm lease approved by the U.S. government and the first under the DOI’s “Smart from the Start” approach, the Interior Department said.

According to Wikipedia, a wind turbine “is a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind, also called wind energy, into mechanical energy; a process known as wind power. If the mechanical energy is used to produce electricity, the device may be called wind turbine or wind power plant. If the mechanical energy is used to drive machinery, such as for grinding grain or pumping water, the device is called a windmill or wind pump. Similarly, it may be called wind charger when it is used to charge batteries.“

The Bluewater lease covers 96,430 acres in federal water about 11 nautical miles (20 km) off the coast of Delaware.
NRG proposed to build a 450-MW project off Delaware, which could generate enough power to supply over 100,000 homes. That
project would cost about $2.7 billion, according to industry estimates.

The 4COff-Shore reports the list of the most important windfarms arounf the World, and as you can see on the site, this market is quite completely dominated by the UK.

Horns Rev Offshore Wind Farm is one of the world´s largest wind farms at sea. It comprises 80 efficient windturbines capable of producing 160 MW. Annual production of the windturbines corresponds to the consumption of 150,000 households using 4,000 kWh per year. Horns Rev Offshore Wind Farm is located in the North Sea 14 kilometers west of Denmark.

Horns Rev 1 became the world’s first major offshore wind farm upon its completion in the Danish North Sea in 2002, but the DKr2bn ($327.8m) project has been plagued with technical problems.

Denmark has been a pioneer in developing commercial wind power during the 1970s, and today almost 50% of the wind turbines around the world are produced by Danish manufacturers such as Vestas and Siemens Wind Power along with many component suppliers. Wind power provided 18.9% of electricity production and 24.1% of generation capacity in Denmark in 2008. In 2012 the Danish government adopted a plan to increase the share of electricity production from wind to 50% by 2020.

There are 568 installed offshore wind turbines in United Kingdom (UK) waters, totalling 1,858 megawatts (MW), and a further 665 turbines in construction, totalling 2,359 MW. The total number of operational and turbines in construction is 1,233. The average capacity of an offshore wind turbine is 3.27 MW. The trend is toward turbines with a bigger installed capacity: the average capacity of turbines in construction is 3.54 MW. Each installed turbine produces per year on average electricity which equals the annual consumption of 1,927 households.

The UK is the world leader in offshore wind with as much capacity already installed as the rest of the world put together. Given the current construction and development pipeline, the UK’s sector lead is likely to continue until 2020. The nation with the most offshore wind farms after the UK is Denmark.

Other informations here