Send to Friend

Take a look at offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and you'll see a curious sight: wind turbines on the platforms, hundreds of them. The one in the picture is on a Chevron rig.

Chevron and other oil companies are using the power from the micro-generating turbines to run the nerve center of oil rig operations - called SCADA in industry jargon. Oil rig SCADA systems used to run off of inefficient thermal electric generators, which burned oil and then converted the heat to electricity. No more.