New Offshore Wind Design: 20% the weight and 30% the price of conventional
newatlas.com
newatlas.com
> Why are they getting so big?" he asks. "What's happening is that it installation and maintenance costs are so insane for these turbines, that you'd rather install and maintain one giant one than two medium ones. But those costs don't apply to us. And there's something called the square-cube law; when you double the size of a turbine design, you increase the swept area of the rotor by four times – but the weight goes up eight times, because you're doubling the height, width and length of every part in three dimensions. So it's actually a losing proposition to go too big for us. We're probably going to find our sweet spot with the lowest cost at somewhere around 7-8 megawatts."
But, seems like they're a pretty small outfit and have no actual business as yet.
The current median LCOE for new offshore wind is ~$125. Reducing capital costs to 30% could bring the median LCOE down to ~$67.
That would make offshore wind a good deal cheaper than all fossil fuels [2]. Natural gas, pre-war, was the cheapest - at about ~$75+.
Onshore wind saw a ~50% decrease in LCOE in 2011 [3]. This could lead to a similar decrease for offshore.
Solar is gaining ground rapidly - 38% growth from 2010-2020 vs 16% for wind. But solar isn't perfect. In the US - we have 3x more wind energy production than solar [4]. But >90% of that is onshore wind - because it was previously so much more economical.
A massive improvement like this for offshore could be huge! If we could add as much offshore wind as we do onshore wind - that could cut out an extra ~12% of fossil fuel consumption over the next decade.
[1] https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/14/7943/pdf
[2] http://www.globalwarming-sowhat.com/renewable-energy-/
[3] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
Dependability has value to society and LCOE does not account for it whatsoever.
Tangentially, the Australian gov is pulling forward 10 years their coal generator retirements (2037->2027) due to how quickly new utility scale renewables are going live.
https://cleantechnica.com/files/2022/06/lcoe-small.jpg?mrf-s...
It's also important to note that plans to phase things out do not indicate success. See California right now.
Large AC needs after the sun goes down will need to be served by time shifting chillers, batteries, wind, hydro, and the last nuclear plant standing in the state.
This has already fallen dramatically in the last 2 years - see both US east coast and UK off shore tenders.
Perhaps you are referring to floating off shore - which is still developing.
> In the US - we have 3x more wind energy production than solar
Wind matured much earlier than PV - but costs have largely plateaued - while PV progress is relentless.
Even at existing costs, PV (+ LFP!) will swamp every thing else.
If the market segment is big, and there is a focused well modelled approach, are early investors interested?
(Yes, off shore is particularly difficult - due to marine factors, and sheer scale and expenses)