The coolest project to tackle this problem (in my opinion) is Tres Amigas, a superconducting interchange between the west coast grid and the (wind-heavy) Texas grid.
> Unlike the Atlantic Ocean, where offshore wind farms can be bolted into the seabed in relatively shallow water, the West Coast's continental shelf plunges quickly and steeply.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-offshore-wind-20160703...
The other option's jackets or monopiles (95% of the market) require almost a 500 kg of steel extra per meter (very rough guideline). This means that at depths more than 25meter the monopile/jacket is more expensive than the wind turbine on top. With the hywind style floaters, this is not the case.
I don't think anyone is going to build a major farm until this one has been running for a couple of years. And they've figured out how to cut costs. Happy to be proven wrong, of course. :)
Statoil isn't the only company working on floating foundations, by the way, although I think they are by far farthest along when it comes to actually putting a big one into production.
For instance, the former CTO of Siemens Wind Power is working on a design. He's going for standard components and as cheap as possible. I wouldn't be surprised to see that in a test production in a couple of years.
The Danes have been at it for almost the better part of a decade[1]. IIRC, their national transport is 100% green 24/7 and has been for a few years now. They've hit events where 100% of their entire country grid was wind-powered, and are so good at it China[2] brought in Danish consultants for assistance. Here's a real time chart of their energy infrastructure (including exports to Sweden/Norway/Germany)[3].
As a MA native, I remember people on the Cape would joke about the "bridge tax" (i.e., anything coming into the Cape is ~25% more). I know until recently[4] their internet connectivity was horrenduous. Energy there is fairly intermittent as well. Hopefully, they'll pick up a few Siemens units (you can pick up retired Siemens Vestas units on ebay for < 100k that are rated in the 10s of MW!) and deploy a unit or two[6], if only as a PR stunt to make themselves look 'progressive'. A win/win if they can increase employment and bring jobs to the locals in addition to that energy.
--
[0] http://gizmodo.com/5984187/british-farmers-install-their-own... "B4RN" is awesome. It's great to see what a community can get done when they ((apologies in advance:) broad)band together.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in...
[2] http://www.reuters.com/article/us-denmark-windpower-china/ch...
[3] https://en.energinet.dk/#energysystem - Real time chart! Porn for green energy nerds like me.
[4] Thier municipality started to offer gigabit through a peering with the Boston/North Shore providers to position their community as a "business friendly, gigabit ready" region in order to attract more businesses, rather than relying on the traditional tourist-town economy. They brought in some contractors to lay cable from Boston (or likely just North of Boston[5]) which is active now with tons of businesses using it, though I'm not entirely sure if the general populace has FttH.
[5] IIRC Andover or Quincy or somewheres around there (http://nationwidecolocation.com/massachusetts_colocation.htm) was one of the major peering points where a significant amount of NE traffic ran through. Traditionally it has great connectivity first due to all of the DARPA peering that occured around universities (MIT still has the 18.x.x.x class A perma-leased from ARIN). This continued through the late 90s/2000s with Verizon using those DC's as their major peer-points (which is incidentally why FiOS was rolled out so early in the Boston suburbs).
[6] You'd have to deploy them strategically in a region that isn't going to interfere with the yuppies boating experience as they go to the Vineyaahhhd on the 4th. NE has the same NIMBY problem that SF has in that regard.
The Danish offshore windfarms have foundations into the sea bed, like the other British and Dutch ones that have existed for over a decade:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in...
As a Dane I can promise you that our governmental public transport is not 100% green, our main long-distance trains (IC3) currently operate on diesel. Neither is the private transport 100% green, since people can buy traditional combustion engine based cars.
DSB publish pollution figures for their fleet: https://www.dsb.dk/om-dsb/samfundsansvar/miljo/fakta-om-milj...
They've internally started rolling out IPv4 NAT and IPv6
The disadvantages are higher construction and maintenance costs; waves and salt water are much more challenging to materials than the ordinary conditions onshore turbine towers experience.
In some cases offshore winds are strong enough that on-shore turbines are less cost effective. That's true for some of the east coast of the US.
Yup !
The turbines are anchored to the sea bed. The wind has a boundary condition against the ground. If the ground is the sea, then the sea current wrt to the sea bed adds to the wind speed wrt to the sea bed.
Therefore, the turbines have zero wind speed only if the wind is blowing exactly against the sea current. Which is hard and rare.
Because the land boundary condition is different, the further away offshore you are, the better the effect is. Also, you might as well pick spots with known stable sea currents.
This article suggests that offshore wind is 3X as expensive as onshore wind:
http://www.windpowermonthly.com/article/1380738/global-costs...
That puts offshore wind as more expensive than gas turbines, for example. And that's assuming an offshore wind project could get past NIMBY opposition. There's a lot more land in the Midwest than there is coastline.
So offshore is expected to get cheaper.
There's a comparison with nuclear down in the thread. I think one important thing to keep in mind here is that these cost reductions coming from industrialization and improved economies of scale are REAL. They happen year over year, has happened for decades, and they will surely lower the price even further in the future. Just like solar. And battery tech for that matter. It's incremental improvements.
http://cphpost.dk/news/denmark-looking-into-building-north-s...
In a couple of decades, I think the North Sea is going have vast areas full of wind turbines.
Current plans are for 5GW of production, that's about 15% of the UK's current electricity demand, and more than is produced by the UK's wind farms in total.
If successful I can't see anything stopping expansion to the initial planned 9GW, other than capital funding.
seriously? Why on earth does it matter if fishermen see wind farms? when did we invent the rule that all energy generation needs to be invisible?
This reminds me of the middle-america folks who were claiming the wind turbines near their houses caused all kinds of disease, including somebody who claimed the wind turbines were causing people to contract aids. Not sure if it's just an unfounded fear of new things, or if it's a concerted effort by the fossil fuel lobby, but people really like to hate wind power.
[1] http://www.aqua.dtu.dk/english/News/2012/04/120410_Fish-thri...
As I understand it, it's predominantly the noise that annoys people (At 110db up close, a turbine is equivalent to a propeller aircraft on taxi, and while most people hear the local town airport when the wind is in the right/wrong direction and/or there's a temperature inversion making the sound carry, those aircraft take off and are gone, while a turbine just keeps droning all day). ~60db has occasionally been measured near housing, and that's loud enough you'd have to raise your voice to talk -- not what people move to the countryside for, and as it's hard to get rid of a turbine after it's built they'll fight tooth and claw to stop it being built anywhere near them.
Yep. An example:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/04/20/cape.cod.wind.farm/index....
Offshore has promise but it's significantly higher in cost and there isn't a lot of long term data on how well they hold up yet.
Whats your definition of long term? 26 years[1] is definitely getting there for me.
A part of the reason for that first farm being decomissioned is because new generation turbines are capable of generating more energy than the entire farm[2]. So maintenance costs per kWh are higher than the new gear.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vindeby_Offshore_Wind_Farm [2] http://www.4coffshore.com/windfarms/dong-to-dismantle-vindeb...
- (lack of) political will
- abundance of cheap natural gas
- lack of US expertise (compared to Europe, where offshore wind has existed for decades)
- hurricanes
Never mind that taste is subjective, and you cannot deny that modern wind turbines don't exactly blend with the natural horizon, be it sky, mountain, or forest...
The nice thing with coal and nuclear power is that rich people can push it's production to poorer areas and forget that there are major externalities to allow them to flip a light switch. Rejecting wind power because it [insert reason here] is just saying "make the poor people deal with it". It is quite literally one of the most selfish decisions anyone can make, to force the world to stay on coal power because wind turbines "don't blend with the horizon".
And plenty of people, rich and poor, oppose skyscraper construction because of view loss.
What is with this inane contemporary idea that we should not be able to use wealth to improve our quality of life? This is the ultimate form of empty virtue signaling. Why haven't you built a turbine on your property yet? I'd venture to guess that you're a well off developer, making you top 1% of the global population...
But it's ok, so long as you have your own 1% to sneer at, right? It's their fault that we dont have turbines!
Classism can be used for the same kind of scapegoating that racism and sexism are.
The inane contemporary argument is that you can use wealth to improve your quality of life. Like not burning coal to make electricity. Arguing that you'd rather stay on coal power than see a windmill isn't trying to improve your quality of life, it's actively destroying someone else's quality of life.
But the lungs of a poor person are worth less than the view of a rich person, so that's what happens. At least coal doesn't "pepper the landscape?" Jesus christ, man. No one is asking you to put a turbine in your backyard, you're just throwing a fit about the hypothetical potential to maybe possibly one day cast a glance at one, and rejecting the idea on that basis.
Did you know meat comes from dead animals too? Yeah, really pretty view from inside a bubble. Real nice horizon.
>No one is asking you to put a turbine in your backyard Sure, but it is going in someone's backyard, and it isn't as footprintless as people make it seem.
Poor and rich share the horizon alike; I would argue that you are the one in a bubble if it is so difficult for you to wrap your head around why people from all classes may not like wind power, especially when other options exist.I'll
>But the lungs of a poor person are worth less than the view of a rich person Why haven't you donated all of your income to starving children? Is your comfort worth so much more than theirs? Dont put words in my mouth.
You're refusing to analyse this from the perspective of cost/benefit. All I'm saying is that there is a non zero cost to choosing windmills over other alternatives, and it has nothing to do with classisim. There are documented complaints from farmers about noise and light problems from windmills.
Again, let me spell this out for you, I dont care if it is true or not, there are people who believe it, and it is subjective. Further, who are YOU to make the decision for the helpless poor that you guard over so arrogantly that a handful of cancer deaths in a region are worth a potential eyesore? You know that people still willingly smoke cigarettes, right? Are you smarter than those people? Are you prepared to look them in the face and say that YOU know better than they?
Ahem,
The 1200 mile Xiangjiaba–Shanghai HVDC line in China has transmission losses "well under 7%" [1]. This line was also completed almost three years ahead of schedule, which is an excellent contrast to Western nuclear plants that are being constructed in China. But then, nobody knows how to complete the AP1000 or EPR on time or on budget, as far as I can tell.
Lots of HVDC lines are going to be essential for cheap power in the US in the future, I just hope the political will materializes for that.
[1] http://3phasepower.blogspot.com/2010/08/xiangjiaba-shanghai-...
Edit: corrected the nuclear comparison.
Sure, on one hand, this kind of project is likely to get into cost overruns. On the other hand, Areva looks like a fairly dysfunctional company following the tenure of Anne Lauvergeon, so it's not only a technical problem.
http://www.postandcourier.com/news/newly-released-report-hig...
Such behavior seems to be borderline criminal, particularly covering up the internal audit.
Yet this is par for the course on nuclear these days.
Even worse, maintenance and running costs of superconducting cables are likely much higher due to the cooling (high temperature superconductors are "high temperature" in comparison to other superconductors - there's still lots of cooling needed).
Transmission is a solved problem, as far as regional power is concerned.
Not really. You'd have to do periodic helicopter patrols of the lines themselves. There isn't really that much "maintenance" that occurs on the line, definitely on the xfmrs/rectifiers/inverters though, but that is normal for any transmission/substation owner.
Also, expected losses are ~5%
It might be physically viable, but I imagine that wouldn't be economically viable.
"Demand response may also be used to increase demand during periods of high supply and/or low demand. Some types of generating plant must be run at close to full capacity (such as nuclear), while other types may produce at negligible marginal cost (such as wind and solar)."[0]
1: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/why-arent-those...
I wish this was higher priority, because the same X is already very cheap where it is Y is true of so many renewable sources like solar as well. And a wide power grid with long distance markets produces more consistent power since it averages different weather in different places and different power sources all together.
Yes, it's a huge problem. States fight against buying cheaper power out of a state because they'd rather pay higher prices but keep the jobs and tax revenue in their own state. And on the other end, places that ended up with unusually cheap power (because the local market changes for example) sometimes oppose building out power lines that would enable the power to be sold nearby because it would end up increase local prices.
So many screwy incentives! Really need a power grid initiative.
Every day I drive past a bridge being constructed. It's a bunch of 50-100ft steel arch sections that go between concrete islands in a shallow river. They would have been done last year if they had just ordered up a replacement and had it brought in on a barge then put it in place. Instead they'd rather spend the money on what's essentially a welfare/jobs program. I wish they'd at least acknowledge that angle rather than playing dumb and looking like they got ripped off.
Seriously though, is that really cost competitive compared with HVDC transmission which has losses of around 3%/1000 km?