Offshore Wind Farm to Power More Than One Million U.K. Homes
wsj.com
wsj.com
I only read the one in the guardian so it might be answered there but isn't higher transmission loss another con for offshore wind farms? How do they deal with that?
http://www.gwec.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Global-Cumula...
We're adding more than 50GW/year now, which should easily put us over the amount of nameplate capacity nuclear installed worldwide. Within the next decade, wind will surpass Nuclear in actual twh of generation as well.
If you assume nuclear is about 400GW installed worldwide and a 90% capacity factor, then wind would only need 900GW installed to match output at a 40% capacity factor. NREL just realeased data that shows potential capacity factors of 60% on over 2 million acres in the US:
http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/windmaps/reso...
Wind and solar are steadily eating world power generation.
They may have been referring to installed capacity in the UK, not worldwide. 30GW by 2019 sounds about right.
Wind supplied 17% of the UK's entire electricity demand in December 2015
There is a premium for reliable sources of electricity generation since you have to have reliable generation to avoid blackouts.
Wind and solar can capture more $fiat per MWh if they purchase Tesla stationary storage and can deliver firm dispatchability (that premium for reliable generation you mention).
Natural gas will make a fine stopgap until we have enough battery storage.
Certainly some markets have prices that vary through the day to give generators the incentive to generate when power is needed most if they have that flexibility.
"Through the auction, government has procured 49.26GW of capacity at a clearing price of £19.40kW" (second link). Note units are kW not MWh.
http://www.nationalgridconnecting.com/keeping-the-lights-on/
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/the-first-ever-capacity-m...
for comparison nuclear power worldwide reached 300gw in the 1980's
... And has largely stagnated since, even declining a bit since the mid-2000s.
The UK has (8,516 + 5,098) ~= 13.6GW of wind capacity[1].
They seem to have reported the UK offshore amount ("8,179MW") as the global capacity:
The global offshore wind market experienced a record year by installed capacity in 2015. Consultancy FTI Intelligence has projected installed generation capacity to nearly quadruple to 31,200 megawatts in 2019 from 8,179 megawatts in 2014.
[1] http://www.renewableuk.com/en/renewable-energy/wind-energy/u...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-26/spain-inst...
Offshore wind is one of the most expensive sources of electricity generation--more expensive than every except solar thermal. https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm Offshore wind is more than twice as expensive as onshore wind.
The fact that the U.K. is pushing offshore wind is one reason why the U.K's electricity rates are much higher than in the U.S. The U.K.'s electricity rates about about $0.22 per kwh [1] compared to an average of $0.13 in the U.S. [2]
[1]http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/... [2] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf...
All in the name of the modern religion - nonsense computer modelled weather forecasts. Most weather cycles - particularly solar cycles related to Gas giant orbits and and our position in the milky way point towards cooling. Currently we are in a weak solar maximum, when this goes minimum in 5 years after El Ninio swings to La Ninia next year - it will be very obvious how silly most people are. Co2 is good, life is carbon based, the world becomes much more fertile at higher levels, in anycase warm is better than cold, most prefer Florida to Canada a much greater temp diff than any concievable warming.
Indeed. If only we paid MPs like they do in Nigeria it would all be much better.
Furthermore, to call computer modelling, i.e. recording all the data we can find and then trying to make sense of it via predictive [though inevitably flawed] analysis a religion is one thing; but if your only counterpoint is some waffle about gas giants and the observation that the weather is nicer in Florida than Canada I find your argument unconvincing. We make predictions as best we can with the data, and maths available to us. ANYTHING else is religion because it isn't subject to counter arguments.
Finally, this obsession with politicians "confiscating our hard earned cash" is pernicious nonsense. We pay tax. The government uses it to build stuff. Most (not all - governments are largely made up of people no smarter than you or me) of it is useful. There are places on the planet where taxes aren't collected in the same way. You're welcome to go there and live with warlords, barrel-bombs, water born diseases that wreck eyesight, drug cartels and all the other fun stuff that goes with any system other than the (rotten, annoying, frustrating, inefficient) thing we already have here in the UK.
I'm not from the UK but I consider myself lucky to have spent time living and working here. I build useful things, get well paid, and willingly pay taxes in exchange for roads, hospitals [modulo PPI], schools, sanitation, rule-of-law and so on.