What makes floating offshore wind turbines different from traditional ones?

Floating offshore wind turbines rest on buoyant platforms that are moored to the seabed with cables rather than being rigidly fixed to it, which lets them operate in much deeper water far from shore where wind blows stronger and more consistently than in the shallow coastal waters traditional turbines are limited to.

They don't spin without wind, that would defeat the entire purpose of a wind turbine, which generates power specifically by capturing wind energy. They also aren't unanchored, drifting freely with no mooring at all would make them impossible to keep connected to underwater power cables or positioned correctly.

This design unlocks vast stretches of deep coastal water off places like Japan and California, where the seabed drops off too steeply for fixed foundations, opening entirely new regions to offshore wind development that were previously considered unusable.