A Norwegian Greentech company has recently unveiled its new 1,000-foot (324m) tall, floating wind turbine array. Called “Wind Catcher”, this innovation in renewable energy generation could be used to power as many as 80,000 homes.

The system has been developed by the Norwegian-based Wind Catching Systems (WCS), who declare that their new wind turbine setup could generate five times the annual energy of the world’s biggest standalone wind turbines. Not only that, but if scaled, it could reduce the costs of wind energy to be competitive with traditional grid-supplied electricity. 

“Wind Catcher” comprises a large metal frame with multiple small turbines mounted into it — over 100 according to artistic renderings of the device. The entire frame sits upon a large floating platform that would be moored to the seafloor when deployed in real life using existing practices mastered by the oil and gas industry for their offshore platforms. 

According to WCS, just one of its “Wind Catcher” systems would have over double (2.5 times) the swept area of the world’s biggest wind turbine, the 15MW Vestas V236. Owing to its smaller turbine blades, WCS’ system should also perform much better in higher wind speeds over 25 mph (11-12 m/s) too.

This also means you could get the same, or similar, “bang for your buck” with fewer “Wind Catcher” turbines than conventional ones. 

At these higher wind speeds, larger, more conventional setups, tend to need to pitch their blades to avoid mechanical damage. This should mean that, according to WCS, “Wind Catcher” could provide a 500% boost in annual energy output – -enough to power 80,000 homes with a single array.

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