SEA OF CHANGE: Offshore wind power in the U.K. may see an upgrade.
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SKEGNESS, England - Humans have left many landmarks across central England's Lincolnshire county over the past two thousand years: Roman roads, medieval castles, World War II airfields. The newest stand three miles offshore from this beach resort town: Fifty-four massive wind turbine towers, each rising 440 feet above the North Sea - about as tall as the Great Pyramid of Giza.
The adjoining wind farms, Lynn and Inner Dowsing, boast 194 megawatts of capacity, enough to power 130,000 homes. When these projects started up in 2008 the U.K. displaced Denmark as the largest offshore wind generator in the world.
Their developer, Centrica Energy, is thinking bigger. It is preparing to build Lincs, a 270-megawatt wind farm with 75 turbines, five miles offshore in the same area - a large shallow bay known as the Wash, where five rivers drain to the sea. And Centrica is proposing two more projects nearby: Docking Shoal (500 megawatts, 9 miles offshore) and Race Bank (620 megawatts, 16 miles offshore).
Centrica is just one of the half-dozen or so biggest players in a fast-growing industry that is critical to Britain's climate change plans. The U.K. has set legally binding targets to cut carbon emissions 34 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050. Wind power is the nation's biggest renewable energy source: Britain has 242 onshore farms generating 3,300 megawatts and eight offshore farms totaling 600 megawatts.
The current Labour government wants to expand wind development radically as part of a shift to a low-carbon economy.
Globally, the World Wind Energy Association projects that wind power will grow by 25 percent in 2009 despite the global economic downturn. Europe has more installed wind capacity than any other region (65 gigawatts through 2008), followed by the United States (25 gigawatts) and Asia (24 gigawatts).
Germany and Spain, which committed to wind power early, are still Europe's leading wind sources, but a second wave of new players is moving up fast. The U.K., France, and Italy all have surpassed Denmark, long seen as the poster-country for wind power. Last year more wind power was built in Europe than any other electricity source, including coal, gas, and nuclear generation.
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8 Comments
Add CommentWind power is ten times the cost of mass produced nuclear. Britain is going big time into nuclear power and will soon be seeing 3 cent or less per kwh prices while they are paying 20 cent a kwh subsidies for unreliable intermittent wind.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGermany has already wasted 10 years and $100 billion dollars on solar/wind and has not reduced its greenhouse emissions one iota. To help with its new found addiction to Russian gas, it is planning a massive build of dirty coal plants to meet its baseload power requirements.
www.spectrum.ieee.org/energy/policy/germanys-green-energy-gap/
It would take wind farms taking up 300 square miles of land and 60 times the steel and green house gas producing concrete to replace a one square mile nuclear plant.
An Australian study has shown that replacing windmills and their associated fast spooling low efficiency load balancing gas plants with high efficiency slow spooling gas plant, actually produces less green house gases at a lower cost
Hyperion, factory sealed, hot tub sized $30 million (122 sales, 2013 delivery) nuke, runs for 7 to 10 years then spews a softball sized bit of waste before factory refueling. Texas wind farm - 56 sq miles of concrete, roads and steel, $1.5 billion. 125 Mw(avg), excluding storage, transmission, and millions annually for load balancing natural gas. Same energy as two Hyperion units or electric power as five located in nearby substations for 10 to 20 times the cost.
Feb 2008, the Texas grid ERCOT (the largest wind user in North America) had to force over a GW of industry to emergency offline status to prevent a system wide shut down as wind inputs suddenly flagged - it takes 1/2 hour to 2 hours (or more) to spin up that much fossil baseload from non-gas-turbine sources (oil, gas fired boilers) - they didn't have enough gas turbines (which take only 5 - 10 minutes to spin up) available to fill the loss of wind power.
A worldwide build of 10000 reactors would be paid for by and would end fossil fuel use creating an incredible market opportunity for our nuclear power industry and saving our collective butts from the a little as ten years away civilization ending global warming/peak oil crisis. Undependable renewable technology is ten times the cost of nuclear and has no hope of getting us off fossil fuels in time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy go big wind when home size units are 2x's as cost effective as you don't have business costs which doubles the price.
The second point is far more power from underwater than wind from the river and tidal currents at about 70% of the price. Plus it's base load power, very dependable, steady.
I've done these in the 80's so I know it can be done. Even a simple paddle wheel style unit can be very cost effective though turbines are far better.
I see Sethdayal is still lying about nukes and other things.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFor instance there is no reason wind can't have eff NG units too. Nor do they take up as much space as he says by 20-50x's. While they need space between them it is usually used for farming, grazing or nature.
Next he ignores the facts that RE can be done at home, doubling their cost effectiveness as utilities double there costs before billing you. And home units are spread apart and average each other out, no longer needing spining reserves wind farms do.
You can see his methods like using the worst cases like Germany.
He is still exaggerating Hyperion's costs by saying it lasts longer than they say, 5 yrs on their website, and excludes the rest of the powerplant costs.
Jerry how are you. Always good to hear.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs you know the Hyperion is refueled every 5 to 10 years not trashed. This compares to every two years or so with the big nukes. Also as I explained to you before, the cost of the American designed AP1000 reactor is now about $1.5 billion a gigawatt when built in China once again 5 to 10% the cost per Gw of our Texas wind farm. Labor is a small part of nuke construction cost.
I noticed you forgot to point out that the wind units have to be replaced every twenty years, the blades every ten, and that NG units they need cost money and use a lot of gas. High efficiency NG units like coal plants take about a half hour to spool up so can't be used with wind gen.
Mountain top wind farms have to be logged and the land cannot be used again. Most US wind power is of this type. Very little sits in farmland. By the way cows and whales hate these units, I'm told.
How are your talks going with Vesta and Samsung on your amazing rooftop wind and run of river DIY units. I can't to see the patents on your double industry standard hyper efficient units.
You go boy!!!!!
The tragic situation in Britain, which lead the first industrial revolution is governed by an establishment that has little regard for the "hard " sciences and engineers. Parliament is dominated by lawyers and political "science" graduates. The civil service is dominated at the senior levels by classics graduates from Oxford and Cambridge. The philosophy being that it is more important to be skilled in the arts of manipulation and coercion than to know how those you are controlling can solve the problems you set them. Thus something conspicuous and expensive, like of shore wind turbines suits the establishment as it appears to be "doing something". The fact that off shore turbines cost more than twice those on shore, but don't produce twice more is down played, as is the fact that these turbines are inaccessible for maintenance and repair for more than 10% of the year. This latter fact greatly increases the insurance risk. In the key debates professional engineers are often excluded, or their expertise ignored as it does not fit with the comforting half truths put out by an industry mining a rich seam of public money taxed indirectly through higher energy bills. The government has so mishandled the energy situation that it will be forced to buy whatever nuclar options it can deploy quickly, regardless of cost. I hope the US is a bit more savvy, and listens to engineers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSethdayal, is making up these figures. Still he fails to mention the fundamental difference between the practical use of wind v nuclear. Wind is safe, it doesn't pass the buck on to future generations. It is quite obvious he is American or he wouldn't have mentioned money. And if he thinks Hyperion( which ironically calls "Hot tub sized" (we move in different circles to you Seth)) gives out a "softball sized bit of waste" you keep it in your refrigerator if you think it is safe enough then!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think Sethdayall is right. Unless you are completely motivated by cash, today, you are not going to want to use wind power. So what if it takes up a lot of room? We have tons, all over the US, lets use it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs well as being ten times the cost of nuclear, wind power uses enormous amounts of very rare neodymium which would better be used in electric cars. In kills hundreds of millions of birds and bats every year including very rare raptors. Their very loud low frequencv hum is now showing to cause human, farm animal and cetacean hearing and other physiological damage.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisGenIV reactors like the several operating and under construction in Europe and Asia,the IFR Clinton shut down at Argonne, and the several new designs from Sandia and Toshiba burn current nuclear waste as a very valuable fuel. This reactor's waste product is no more radioactive than high grade natural uranium right out of the mine.
Tell you what though I'll bury a couple of lbs of nuclear waste in my backyard as long as we can sequester all tens the thousands of tons of radioactive arsenic and mercury laden coal dust and CO2 you produce in yours.