{"id":4168,"date":"2012-01-06T07:00:53","date_gmt":"2012-01-06T13:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/?p=4168"},"modified":"2013-01-29T09:37:34","modified_gmt":"2013-01-29T15:37:34","slug":"pinwheels-of-energy-texas-offshore-wind-potential","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/texas\/2012\/01\/06\/pinwheels-of-energy-texas-offshore-wind-potential\/","title":{"rendered":"Pinwheels of Energy: Texas’ Offshore Wind Potential"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Joern Pollex\/Getty Images<\/p>

An offshore wind project in the Baltic Sea.<\/p><\/div>\n

Do you ever enjoy the cool breezes on the beaches of the Gulf Coast? Well, those winds could one day be cooling you down in your own home.<\/p>\n

A few years from now, you might stand on the shore and\u00a0see miles and miles of massive three-pointed stars rotating along the surface of the sea.\u00a0They\u2019re offshore wind turbines, and hundreds of them may one day dot the horizon.<\/p>\n

Mention “offshore wind” to Mark Leyland<\/a>, and he becomes almost wistful.\u00a0\u201cAhh, offshore wind,”\u00a0the Senior Vice President for Wind Energy\u00a0Projects\u00a0at Baryonyx<\/a> says. “Even though a lot of people in Texas have seen onshore wind<\/a>, I always say that offshore wind and onshore wind are only similar in one respect: they [both] have the word \u201cwind\u201d in their title.\u201d<\/p>\n\n

Even though he grew up in Britain, or as he likes to call it, \u201cEast Texas,\u201d Leyland has spent the last few decades building offshore oil rigs in the gulf. He now wants to bring that drilling expertise to wind, and so his company has leased 67,000 acres of land off the coast of Texas<\/a> to build hundreds of giant wind turbines.<\/p>\n

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Photo by Terrence Henry\/StateImpact Texas<\/p>

Mark Leyland is trying to build a giant wind farm off the coast of Texas.<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cWe believe that the immediate future of it is in what I call the windy crescent<\/a>,” he says, “which is the area offshore between Corpus Christi and Brownsville. That basically is the windiest part of the Gulf of Mexico<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

The company estimates that on the high end, those turbines could generate up to 3 gigawatts of power. That\u2019s enough to power two to three percent of the Texas grid. And the turbines would generate electricity during crucial times of peak demand: hot, dry summer afternoons when the grid nears capacity.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt blows every day, as some of my friends down there say — \u00a0\u201cIt blows every bloody day!<\/em>\u201d — and it does,” Leyland notes. “Clearly, during those [summer] months it\u2019s seen as a potential really serious reinforcement for the grid.\u201d<\/p>\n

How does offshore wind work? They are single turbines anchored on rigs similar to ones used for oil. Once they start turning, they essentially become offshore power stations.<\/p>\n

But a challenge with offshore wind is that it\u2019s more expensive to build, and will take time. The company is waiting while the Army Corps of Engineers does an environmental impact study of the offshore wind farm. It could take up to two years.<\/p>\n

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