Is this the future? Dutch plan vast windfarm island in North Sea

The Guardian: Advanced plans by Dutch power grid aims to build power hub possibly at Dogger Bank whose scale would dwarf current offshore sites. Britain’s homes could be lit and powered by windfarms surrounding an artificial island deep out in the North Sea, under advanced plans by a Dutch energy network. The radical proposal envisages an island being built to act as a hub for vast offshore windfarms that would eclipse today’s facilities in scale. Dogger Bank, 125km (78 miles) off the East Yorkshire coast, has been identified as a potentially windy and shallow site. The power hub would send electricity over a long-distance cable to the UK and Netherlands, and possibly later to Belgium, Germany, and Denmark. TenneT, the project’s backer and Dutch equivalent of the UK’s National Grid, recently shared early findings of a study that said its plan could be billions of euros cheaper than conventional windfarms and international power cables. The sci-fi-sounding proposal is sold as an innovative answer to industry’s challenge of continuing to make offshore wind cheaper, as turbines are pushed ever further off the coast to more expensive sites as the best spots closer to land fill up. Click to read more