What floats and generates electricity?

This week, Google captured headlines with news of its patent for floating data centers.

Not a classic technology breakthrough, but it is compelling (despite it being only on paper).

Why?

Because of the twist it adds to previous floating platform designs with its reliance on wave energy converters to power the floating grid.

What most people missed, however, was a North Sea plan to build a platform which would be powered by electricity from the mainland.

Odd as it may sound, the Gøja platform is designed to reduce emissions to the environment by 250,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. And it will be operational by 2010.

A cable running from a new power plant onshore at Mongstad, which is north of Bergen is expected to supply the platform with electricity.

No doubt, both designs have their merits and advantages.

The Google platform uses the immense resources of the ocean to supply two critical needs: cooling and power.

The platforms are designed to use wave energy converters made by the Scottish company Pelamis Wave Power. And the design involves a floating platform with data centers positioned some three-to-seven miles offshore in 50-to-230 feet of water.

Pelamis claims its built a 2.25 megawatt commercial wave farm, but says the machines are still in commissioning phase.

Even though the Gjøa field is being developed to recover an estimated 82 million barrels oil reserves from a semi-submersible production platform, the idea of using shore power is worth note.

An obvious missing piece of information from the press announcement was carbon output of the electrical power plant onshore.

We may have wait a bit longer for that release to hit our mail inbox.