Scotland’s floating wind farm is showing how powerful offshore wind can be
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/ort...
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/ort...
Many years ago some people were looking into reclaiming the island and making it the worlds biggest wind farm. It is in a perfect location. Plus you never know, might be able to make it an independent nation ;). Possibly a good launch site?
One of those little inconsistencies that stood out to me...
Scratches head MW = 1000J / s
What happens when you send 30MW per minute..
30MW per minute = 1000J / s / m
Hmmm
They didn't write it in the sense of "30MW per minute", it was "30MW every minute" meaning a constant power rating of 30MW, instead of a variable rating where one minute it's 30MW and the next minute it's at 20MW, or whatever.
"A capacity factor of 100 percent means the wind farm would be sending 30MW of power to the grid every minute of every day since it's been in operation."
The "sending" portion makes me interpret this in the sense of 30MW per minute.
As I understood the term the capacity factor is the percentage of time the plant is generating power. All plants have periods of maintenance and other "down times" which means they don't achieve 100% capacity. I would expect to use that number like this:
Given a 30MW plant with a 50% capacity factor measured for the year, I would consider it to provide 30MW x 180 x 24 or 129,600 MWh of generating capacity. Two plants with a 50% capacity factor would give you coverage at their rated power all year only if they never overlapped in their down time. So if I was working the issue operationally I'd put in three plants to insure I had 100% coverage of 30MW all year long.
[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/renewable-sources-o...
"Every minute of every day" is just a common English expression to mean "all the time." The word "minute" in there isn't significant and doesn't factor in the calculation, it's just for emphasis.
So really all the author means is "producing 30MW consistently for the whole time it's been in operation." Or if they did use minutes as a time slice in the capacity calculation, it would have to be "averaging 30MW during every minute of every day".
Saying that this is ambiguous is paramount to making the assumption that the author does not know the difference, and then trying to twist the meanings to prove your point. That's unnecessarily tendentious.
Some way to go before it becomes competitive...
> By 2030, Statoil says, it hopes to bring the cost of floating offshore wind down to €40-60 per MWh ($50-74 per MWh).
Even if the cost decline curve starts to flatten, the fate of fossil and nuclear generators is sealed.
To use a simple example outside of renewables, it's now more expensive than ever before in US history to complete a large infrastructure project (say, a new bridge across the Hudson River), but you can buy a $40 Raspberry Pi that has more processing capacity than all the billions of dollars worth of computers that existed in the 60s.
Floating towers are definitely a revolution in wind farm building.
(I found several citations around boom/bust cycles, but mostly paywalled [WSJ, Economist]; Google if you're interested)
Also, look at it from the other side: the actors (states) who might be interested in propping up shipyards have very little direct use for generic shipping. Even less if there is a shipping glut (which would typically be just the time when the shipyard would need the propping-up). Conventionally, the only realistic thing a state could do to keep the shipyards in business would be to order some warships. With floating wind, this would change, instead of getting something destructive that will keep costing money once it's there you could get something productive.
1. Wind Power ~ v^3 (the power produced is proportional to the wind speed cubed. So a site with 8m/s average speed makes twice as much money as one with 6m/s!
2. Often, that sweet offshore-spot is too deep (in that the cost of monopiles [1] is prohibitive).
So the key decision is: If I can make it go just a little deeper, I can make 2x or 3x as much money. Thus floating turbines can unlock more revenue (but the cost variation is not so important).
[1] http://www.4coffshore.com/windfarms/monopiles-support-struct...
The large turbines typically operate up to 25m/s and then shut down for safety. Really large offshore turbines operate ideally at an average of 11m/s [1]. You can also see some real data here [2].
However, what investors (or farm operators) really care about it LCOE. Levelized cost of Energy over the lifetime of the machine. It's that $50/MWh and considers the revenue (roughly proportional to v^3) and all the costs. After that it's an optimization game:
- Too far = costly maintenance, costly installation, longer cables, rougher seas - Too close = not enough wind (but "cheap" installation)
(Plus many other important factors: risk, incentives, NIMBY, access to capital, wind turbulence, etc, etc)
[0] https://goo.gl/images/NFny2a [1] http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uceseug/Fluids2/Wind_Turbine... [2] http://www.wind-power-program.com/large_turbines.htm
As for the bridge: the concrete business doesn't see a lot of innovation.
Still if corrected for inflation and aiming for similar durability, it wouldn't surprise me if today's engineering can build cheaper bridges. After all, we've learned a thing or two about suspension bridges over the years.
False. Every industry has what's known as the learning curve. It is this curve which is responsible for e.g., the 90% drop in cost of solar panels since 2000.
Wind turbine manufacture, blade manufacture, mooring, installation, maintenance, management, all are following a significant industrial learning curve and there is every reason to expect it to continue to behave like other industries.
1) What does Big Oil's subsidies (including special tax breaks) look like?
2) Depending on where you stand on the cause of climate change, I think it could be argued that aiding renewables isn't a subsidy in the traditional sense, as much as inventment in hopes of mitigating future expenses due to climate change.
I'm in favor of subsidies for clean energy, but I'm also in favor of calling a spade a spade.
Pretty much every subsidy nowadays has some "for the public good" narrative, some more believable than others. I don't think having a better such narrative than average makes it not a "subsidy in the traditional sense".
2) Depending on where you stand on the cause of climate change, I think it could be argued that aiding renewables isn't a subsidy in the traditional sense, as much as inventment in hopes of mitigating future expenses due to climate change.
I don't want to assume, so I have to ask: Do you understand the difference between an expense and an investment?
To clarify, it's not narrative if $X today aims to save $X x Y and Z lives tomorrow, to say nothing of the social and sociopolitical disruption. That's still a subsidy? I don't agree; at all.
Oil & Gas $0.95/MWh
Coal $1.07/MWh
Nuclear $1.74/MWh
Wind $15.15/MWh
Solar $42.51/MWh
Other RE $22.85/MWh
[1] /Federal Financial Support for Electricity Generation Technologies/, https://energy.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/UTAustin_FCe_S...
[1] "As Offshore Wind Power Picks Up, Do Seabirds Need to Suffer?" https://www.hakaimagazine.com/news/as-offshore-wind-power-pi...
Having many producers, connected by the grid, smooths out any fluctuations on the “minute” timescale. There’s also some smoothing because solar and wind tend to peak at different times of the day.
Batteries have also improved dramatically, and there are “smart grid” efforts that could help, such as running some consumers during times of peak production (refrigerator compressors, aluminum smelters), or using grid-connected batteries, such as charging cars.
The storage problem is imminently solvable and, with the improvements in solar efficiency, renewables are certain to become cost leaders rather soon. In fact they may already have.
If you want us to take your comment seriously, you will need to show that the CO2 emissions would be on some significant level.
http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2012/05/09/emissions-from-the-c...
The LCA literature, including this page, is quite seriously flawed. But it should be a good starting point.
Trying to figure this out, a nuclear plant might have 1GW capacity and a lifetime of 30 years, so ≈260,000 hours. [1] seems to suggest a plant would need 40,000t of steel, or about 0.16t steel/GWh over the lifetime, with coal plans using over twice that. My math might be off, or the assumptions might be wrong.
[1] https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/519e/a5c55a312f3f45ccfcc4a0...
Looks like your page is pretty pro-nuclear. Comparing the total cost of solar power with the cost of ONLY the uranium in a nuclear reactor... that's very misleading.
Yes.
> Comparing the total cost of solar power with the cost of ONLY the uranium in a nuclear reactor... that's very misleading.
The fission materials intensity number includes the mass of an entire plant and all the fuel that will ever go in it. The assumed technology is also 40 years old and very far from optimal for fission.
And as for Fission material intensity, obviously it looks great: Fission releases an enormous amount of energy from a small amount of matter. But cost-wise, fission plants are expensive. Your cost data are misleading ones, not material data: You compare lifetime cost of solar and a few other options with the cost of ONLY the uranium. Fission plants themselves are hugely expensive, even before you put the Uranium in them.
The fuel figures shouldn't be misleading because they're clearly labeled. The balance of plant for solar is not included with the panel cost. As with the nuclear plant, there is no commodity pricing to include.
The nuclear industry has been trying to convince us that nuclear energy is cheap, but this is becoming a very tough sell after a series of bankruptcies and massive cost overruns.
So now they try to sell us on how great nuclear is because it uses less total weight of material per gigawatt produced.
That may be the case but it is still far more expensive than all the other options. It is like saying that a Ferrari must be cheaper than Chrysler minivan because it has about half the weight of total metal in it.
From the article:
> Capacity factor measures a generation unit's actual output against its theoretical maximum output.
So this would be a percentage of your theoretical maximum, never exceeding it, by definition.
I would've presumed the theoretical maximum for a producing unit would be what it could theoretically actually produce in the location its placed. If it's the theoretical maximum output of a cell, then calling BS seems warranted, but it doesn't seem like that would be a useful comparator in this context.
http://sinovoltaics.com/learning-center/quality/standard-tes...
Those conditions reflect not the theoretical maximum but an expected output in very good actual conditions.
This is relevant because it relates to the needed transmission capacity one need installed. For instance, at 30% capacity factor, you're "wasting 70%" of transmission on average.
It's a good metric to compare between sites of a same energy source but it's not very useful between sources. For that, the better metric is Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) in $/MWh. Usually present with or without subsidies.
* For example, Agua Caliente Solar Project, located in Arizona near the 33rd parallel and awarded for its excellence in renewable energy has a nameplate capacity of 290 MW and an actual average annual production of 740 GWh/year. Its capacity factor is thus: 29%
* A significantly lower capacity factor is achieved by Lauingen Energy Park located in Bavaria, near the 49th parallel. With a nameplate capacity of 25.7 MW and an actual average annual production of 26.98 GWh/year it has a capacity factor of 12.0%.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor#Photovoltaic_p...
I often gripe about people using the word nuclear to describe exclusively fission, which is regrettable for those of us keen on encouraging research in fusion.
The use of the word 'solar' to describe exclusively PVCs is comparably regrettable.
Solar thermal is pretty much guaranteed to trump PVCs at the moment, albeit at a higher capex.
The SNP’s plans for tidal barriers came to naught (as did their dreams of oil at $100/barrel)
Energy is a reserved area and not within the remit of the Scottish Parliament.