Technical and economical analysis of off-shore wind turbines

The ever-increasing demand for energy in our world has been answered with fossil fuels for centuries, and it has only been in recent decades that the environmental problems created by the consumption of fossil fuels and the decrease in the worldwide reserves of these fuels has attracted the attention of authorities. It is known that countries have focused more on renewable energy sources in the latest decades through aims of preventing pollution, creating sustainability in their energy policies and also in order to reduce foreign dependability on fuels. While the dominance of fossil fuels in relatively poor countries remains unchallenged due to its cost-to-effect ratio, developed countries such as those in Europe and the U.S. increase their research and investments in various renewable energy sources. When we take into account the worldwide potential for renewable energy sources and our ability to draw from this potential with our current state of technology, wind energy stands as a strong choice. Having a relatively higher scalability to large-scale installations, wind energy has an important place in many developed nations? energy policies for the future such that England, Germany and some Scandinavian countries aim to produce as much as 20% of their total energy production from wind sources in a few decades. While the foundations of wind energy lie in the windmill-like ground based wind turbines and the current wind energy capacity is largely comprised from such installations, there are technical and environmental advantages to deploy turbines over water. Through exploiting such advantages large investments have been made in the last decade, especially in the Baltic Sea. This study includes an analysis of offshore wind energy turbines from technical, environmental and economical viewpoints and an assessment of under which conditions their installations will be reasonable.