William Heronemus

William Heronemus was an American engineer, often called the father of offshore wind power, who proposed some of the earliest serious designs for large scale offshore wind farms. A former US Navy submarine designer turned professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, he published a 1972 proposal for arrays of floating wind turbines moored off the New England coast, arguing that offshore winds were strong and steady enough to make large scale wind generation practical at a time when the technology was still viewed as a niche curiosity. Heronemus also researched using surplus wind-generated electricity to produce hydrogen by electrolysis as a way to store and transport wind energy, an early formulation of the wind-to-hydrogen concept later research programs continued to pursue.