Engineers Forum » Hurricane Storm Ships

[Grant]

The amount of energy you can get from windmills is directly proportional to the cube of the wind speed (see potential turbine power). So a breeze of 20 mph has 8 times the potential of a 10 mph breeze. A wind speed of 40 mph has 64 times the potential of a 10 mph breeze. A wind speed of 80 mph has 512 times the potential of a 10 mph breeze. Continuing this logic out, the math suggests a category 5 hurricane (155+ mph) can have 4,000 times the potential for power generation of a 10 mph breeze.

The hurricane storm ship is a concept that aims to capitalize on the high wind speeds of hurricanes and storms at sea. The engineering challenges are great but the concept is simple. First you need to create a ship that can deal with hurricane conditions and then you need to put specially designed windmills on the deck of the ship. Then you have the ship find a storm and sail around with it and generate/store power until the storm dies, hits land, or another more promising storm becomes available.

I am not claiming this is going to be economically viable but the possibility exists. There may be some tough old ship or sub out there that can be put back into service. Perhaps it makes sense to drag water turbines behind the boat as well. It is a fun idea to think about.