In an effort to protect tidelands, the German government has enacted environmental laws to force some offshore wind farm developers to build in deeper waters, further from the shore. As a result, three new 5 MW turbines, operating 45km off the German-Dutch coast, began test runs a couple of weeks ago. Today's European wind farms operate only 20 km off the coast.

The wind farm (Alpha-Ventus) will actually operate 12 turbines when completed. A consortium of EWE, E.ON and Vattenfall are behind the project, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Germany hopes to generate 12 percent of its power from wind by 2020.

The International Energy Agency has suggested that offshore wind power will grow more than 100-fold by 2030.

Jeff