World's Largest Offshore Wind Farm Opens Off Northwest England (reuters.com) 175
The world's largest offshore wind farm has opened off the northwest coast of England. "The wind farm has a capacity of 659 megawatts (MW), enough to power almost 600,000 homes, and overtakes the London Array off England's east cost which has a capacity of 630 MW," reports Reuters. From the report: The Walney Extension (as it is called) is made up of 87 turbines built by Siemens Gamesa and MHI Vestas, and covers 145 square kilometers (55 square miles), which is equivalent to around 20,000 football pitches. The 40 eight-megawatt MHI Vestas turbines being used stand 195 meters (213 yards) tall and are the largest wind turbines in operation globally. Britain is the world's largest offshore wind market, hosting 36 percent of globally installed offshore wind capacity, data from the Global Wind Energy Council showed. Walney Extension was among the first renewable projects to secure a so-called contract for difference (CFD) subsidy from the British government in 2014. The contract guarantees it a minimum price for electricity of 150 pounds ($195) per megawatt hour (MWh) for 15 years. You can view some drone footage of the offshore windfarm via Orsted.
Realtime grid CO2 intensity map (Score:5, Interesting)
Open Source Realtime grid CO2 intensity map (Score:1)
Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map (Score:5, Interesting)
Here is a real time G.B. National Grid Status [templar.co.uk], shows that wind is 15% (as I type).
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This should give wind a major boost in the UK. Hopefully the first of many.
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I often visit Gridwatch and it really demonstrates the volatility of wind energy. I've seen it as high as 35% of total generation and a big fat 0% during a cold and still night; which ironically is when you need that energy the most.
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Offshore wind is a lot more stable, one of the main advantages of it in fact.
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I've seen it as high as 35% of total generation and a big fat 0% during a cold and still night; which ironically is when you need that energy the most.
Don't worry, global warming has made it so that England needs the energy the most during the day, so they can run AC.
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No, it's not. There is a reason that there are electricity tariffs such as "Economy 7", which provides cheaper electricity at night.
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Wow, that map is amazing.
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e.g. right now (morning peak), the UK's running on 28% gas, 24% nuclear, 19% wind, 8% coal, 4% solar.
The part of the UK I come from produces 125% of its electrical needs from wind. Years ago, I came across people who told me that I should be angry at the wind turbines because they are ugly, cause interference and kill lots of birds.
They aren't, they don't and they don't so nobody got angry but it is nice to know that even a small, underfunded, area like Orkney can be a net exporter. If Elon Musk wants to come up, he can install some of his batteries - as long as he doesn't call anybody nasty things...
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Thanks; very interesting - shows that the only two "green" countries in Europe are:
1. Norway (the place was designed by God for hydro, it would appear), and
2. France, which is pretty-much all nuke.
So, if you're not Norway....
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>> "green" countries ... 2. France, which is pretty-much all nuke.
That's not true.
This map is real time "as of now", and in average over a year it's muuuuuuch much worse, and very different.
Basically France exports a lot of nuke electricity, esp. to Germany in the summer, but imports much more coal based electricity in the winter from Germany. This is due to the bad use of electric heating in France.
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Not really, Some electricity exported from France may flow through Germany. But Germany is actually a net exporter of electricity all year round. Yes, France has to import in the winter and also sometimes in summer if it gets so hot hat the nuclear plants have to be down regulated to avoid over heating of rivers. Also sometimes a lot of plants are down for some reason.
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France exports its CO2 production to the uranium mines.
Just like how the UK exports its CO2 production from wind to the mines for the copper, steel, aluminum, and rare earth metals?
Looks like off shore wind and nuclear are at a tie on greenhouse gas emissions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The UK already has had problems with too much wind power and has been paying wind farms to sit idle.
https://www.express.co.uk/news... [express.co.uk]
That's assuming the wind farms weren't producing power anyway, or forced to shutdown because of high winds.
https://stopthesethings.com/20... [stopthesethings.com]
H
Great site - what's is measuring? (Score:2)
Hovering over countries (and US states) at random, I see that the UK is (at 9:45AM Eastern, US):
63% low carbon
40% renewable
Good for them! Uh... now I'm wondering what those numbers actually mean.
Since the percentages add to 103%, I assume they are measuring different things. Then, 63% of *what* is low carbon, and 40% of *what* is renewable?
Poring through the FAQ for explanation is not viewer friendly, they're not doing the public a favor. And for most cases, when the percentages add to *less than* 100% who
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lowcarbon - renewable = nuclear
low-carbon could also include e.g. gas with carbon sequestration, but this doesn't really exist on the grid (yet), apart from maybe one or two small demo plants.
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You are missing imports and exports.
Re:Realtime grid CO2 intensity map (Score:5, Interesting)
The UK is really lucky that it is the best spot in the entire world for tidal power, which unlike wind and solar is predictable and guaranteed. At least when the tide stop being predictable and guaranteed we have bigger problems than having no electricity.
The UK could basically get most of it's energy from tidal if there was just the will to build it. Instead we get hung up about diminished salt flats for birds. Oh and the absolutely hilarious bit is that the Solway Firth is one of the better spots for tidal generation. Top spots are Bristol Channel with around 8GW, Pentland Firth with possibly as much as 20GW, the Mersey with around 1.5GW. Further being an island much of this generation can be paired up around the coast line to give fairly continuous power. Add in some additional pumped storage (there is a lot of capacity potential for that in the UK) and we are golden.
Instead we pump ~30GBP billion into a nuclear power station that would generate about one quarter the output of a tidal scheme in the Bristol Channel which would be cheaper to boot.
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Friends of the Earth said the tidal was the least bad option and backed it in the UK, so it's not environmental objections that are the issue. It's money and being risk averse.
Why take a risk on tidal when nuclear is backed by massive, infinite government subsidies? Especially when wind is getting so cheap so fast too.
Also, last I heard it was up to £54 billion.
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7.92 MWh = 28512 MJ. If you figure the average tide is 1 meter and happens 2x a day, then to produce the same amount of energy from tidal power requires an area
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>> replacing the Fukushima nuclear plant with wind turbines would require several hundred km^2
That's good, because the Fukushima nuclear plant grown larger and now occupies 1000km^2 of land, so with smart wind and solar implantation, Japan could probably increase the nameplate capacity of Fukushima from -0.2 GW today to 40 GW
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Price wtf? (Score:3)
So why are we paying so much? Denmark are paying half the amount for offshore electricity per MWh. This govt is useless with money.
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It's a subsidy. Just couched in a form that forces inflation and fucks up old people trying to stay warm in winter.
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Indeed. People have been losing their shit over the £93/MWH strike price for Hinkley Point C so why aren't people outraged about this?
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Hmm, about 60% of the income for this windfarm is government price supports for the next 15 years...
Not sure why it needs price supports, if, as is frequently stated here, it's one of the most economical forms of energy, and far cheaper then coal or nuclear....
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Offshore wind is incredibly expensive. You're thinking of onshore wind which comes in at 1/3rd of the cost.
That said offshore wind has some benefits that onshore doesn't: Predictability, strength, and it doesn't take up land. However offshore wind pretty much loses on a cost basis quite spectacularly.
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On shore wind has the same predictability as off shore wind.
It only is usually not as strong and not as steady.
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On shore wind has the same predictability as off shore wind.
It only is usually not as strong and not as steady.
Yes true. Thanks I used the wrong words. Steady is a much better way to describe it.
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Well,
there are specialized companies that craft and sell localized wind prognosis data.
That is used to 'predict' the output of windfarms up to 4 hours ahead (actually up to 40h but only 4h are relevant for scheduling your other power plants). The data is used to determine how to dispatch your dispatchable plants (or plan for it).
Similar companies make prognosises for solar power.
The dispatcher of a fleet of plants usually knows quite accurately how his wind and solar plants will perform in the foreseeable f
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Whatever happened to those wind storage walls? (Score:2)
I can remember a flurry of interest in pairing large offshore windfarms in shallow European waters with large, wall-off "islands" of sea adjacent to the farm. Whenever there was excess wind for the grid offtake, seawater would be pumped into this enclosure, available for release as hydro when the wind slackened. Was this idea ever tried?
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Forget installed capacity - means nothing (Score:2)
Installed capacity has meaning for hydro power, coal and nuclear. For solar and wind, it is like the relationship between the maximum speed on your car's speedometer vs what the roads and traffic allow.
Here is what all of the wind power in UK is generating in this live grid display:
https://www.gridwatch.templar.... [templar.co.uk]
If you look at the tiny graphs under the dials it displays wind power as a blue line in the second column. It peaked at about 5 GW wind production on Sunday Sept 2, and then was nearly zero
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The concept that the wind is always blowing somewhere is not true for a place as small as the U.K.
It always blows when I am cycling, and always against me. It's made doubly hard as my commute to and from work is uphill both ways.
660 MW for 600k homes? (Score:2)
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Does each home only use 1.1KW ? seriously ?
On average at a given time, yes. Actually much less.
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Takes a 10kw generator for backup for our house, still can't power everything.
Turn off your cluster, then, or stop making carbon fiber. I was able to run a whole house including a deep well pump AND a shallow well jet pump on a 7kW generator.
Size references (Score:2)
I understand (not really, it is sort of stupid actually, who really can imagine 20,000 football fields stuck together) but this is about England for Gods' sake, can't you speak in terms of soccer fields!!!! ?
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You are right it is England so its football pitches
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Humor detector broken?
Nice, but not enough (Score:2)
The great lakes Wind farms are still years off (Score:2)
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It's a delay tactic.
Is it a large-scale bird grinder? (Score:2)
Where are we at with these things being large-scale bird grinders or not?
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These turbines are gigantic and move at a slugs place, so no these will never be "bird grinders".
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Nobody says they will "never be 'bird grinders,'" according to the literature. The jury is still out:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-many-birds-do-wind-turbines-really-kill-180948154/ [smithsonianmag.com]
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These are a set of the LARGEST turbines in the world and they are offshore. Smaller turbines that are on shore are more likely to kill birds. These will never be bird grinders, you twit.
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Wrecks (Score:2)
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In my area when we have our frequent wind storms it is not rare to have a commercial vesel of large size lose power and be driven onto our beaches. In one case the bow of an ocean liner came across the sand and was resting in the swimming pool of a condominium. Fixing that sort of thing is very expensive. Now, can these windmills take a hit from a large ship? How well do these turbines do when we have 180 mph. winds that gust even higher? How often would an event be expected based on local historic events and what cost would be involved to repair or replace the turbine?
There's a lot of coastline, not so much wind turbine, so the chances of a ship hitting a turbine is very small. They feather the props in high winds. There would be an issue if the feathering broke, but then the blades are varied to make the best of the wind anyway, so a misbehaving turbine would be spotted quickly and preemptively feathered. If the ability to point into the wind also went, that might be an issue, but they are pretty tough.
peak, base - doesn't fit - negative price (Score:4, Insightful)
Negative price - The UK government has guaranteed the operators they will pay a fixed price for the electricity produced by these windmills. That means that when the wind blows and no one wants the electricity the price of electricity will go negative. People will be paid to consume electricity. In Ontario, Ohio, Pennsylvanian and Michigan we did the same thing. Here the wind blows the most after everyone has gone to bed in January and February. This is also our lowest consumption time.
I've dealt with the bureaucracy in electrical grids in many countries. The stupidity is amazing but the UK is special, they have an extra layer of cronyism and arrogance that no other country has.
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Couldn't home or business users take advantage of the negative power rates to charge batteries that would be used to provide power during non-free times? And if enough users opted for this approach, the rates would become positive during those current negative rate periods and other periods might reduce due to lower power demand?
Subsidies (Score:2)
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Not necessarily. For one thing, we need more power generation that doesn't emit CO2, even at the expense of having to pay for it.
Also, consider what happens if we stop these payments: we'll end up with fewer wind generators. This'll save us money at times where the wind is very high and we're generating too much wind power, but what about the rest of the time? We'll end up having to pay to generate that power in gas plants instead. If the extra money spent on gas is greater than the constraint payments bein
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Not necessarily. For one thing, we need more power generation that doesn't emit CO2, even at the expense of having to pay for it.
If cost is not a concern then why not use an energy source that is more reliable and emits less CO2? Such as nuclear power.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2018/08/why-i-favor-nuclear-power.html
Also, consider what happens if we stop these payments: we'll end up with fewer wind generators. This'll save us money at times where the wind is very high and we're generating too much wind power, but what about the rest of the time? We'll end up having to pay to generate that power in gas plants instead. If the extra money spent on gas is greater than the constraint payments being paid to wind farms, then you'd be stupid to stop the latter. It'll cost you more money.
Or, they could use nuclear power. That's what they could use the rest of the time. Nuclear power has lower environmental impact that natural gas so that seems more logical to use nuclear power to cover when the wind doesn't blow.
The article you linked hints at this when it says 'The National Grid said the wind constraint payments were “the most economically efficient way of managing additional green capacity”.'.
I don't have data on how often these payments are being made, but I can tell you that the UK's wind farms spend a significant amount of time generating less than the highest amount they generate, which suggests they don't spend a lot of time in shutdown mode (and it's worth noting that "shutdown mode" doesn't mean they're shut down; it means they're generating lots of power, which is great because that's exactly what you want).
I'm not saying these payments are desirable in and of themselves; obviously the grid needs upgrades to avoid wasting wind power (while considering the cost of doing so, and the impact of reduced constraint payments on the rate of new wind generation capacity, because we still want more of it). I'm just pointing out that this may very well be the overall cheapest option available, even before considering that we want to subsidise wind generation in order to get more of it.
It seems counter intuitive to keep adding more wind generation capacity and pay them to si
Re:Will this one lose money too? (Score:4, Informative)
Nuclear is more expensive. It's that simple.
Then we should subsidize it until it's cheaper. If that works for other low CO2 energy sources then it should apply to nuclear as well.
Nuclear power also works at night, in high winds, in no winds, when it's raining, cold, hot... okay maybe it has to reduce power when it gets really hot. That's why we need a mix. Pick energy that's cheap, low CO2, and safe. The top three on that is onshore wind, hydro, and nuclear, not necessarily in that order. Then comes things like (also not in any particular order) geothermal, biomass fuels, off shore wind, and concentrated thermal solar. (Cite on CO2 emissions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] )
Solar PV is just a bad idea all around. Anyone that thinks that PV is cheap is only looking at the subsidized cost, the real cost is very high except when laid out flat on a field. Putting PV on rooftops might mean not losing any area of value but it can multiply the cost by five times. (cite: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ) Solar power isn't all that safe either, considering how many industrial accidents there are per real energy produced. Solar PV is also very resource intensive. (cite: http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com] )
If people believe that solar and wind can get cheaper if we will it so and throw enough money at the problem then we can do the same to make nuclear cheaper.
If nuclear power costs too much then lower the price. It's that simple.
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Nuclear is more expensive. It's that simple.
Then we should subsidize it until it's cheaper.
Nuclear has gotten subsidies for more than 60 years.It always ever got more expensive. There is a word for doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
If that works for other low CO2 energy sources then it should apply to nuclear as well.
No. Why?
Nuclear power also works at night, in high winds, in no winds, when it's raining, cold, hot... okay maybe it has to reduce power when it gets really hot.
Great. But the problem is that you basically always have to have it running to not make the economics worse.... This means it is not too useful to have nuclear in a modern grid.
That's why we need a mix.
Yes, but a mix without nuclear as nuclear is simply too expensive.
Pick energy that's cheap, low CO2, and safe. The top three on that is onshore wind, hydro, and nuclear, not necessarily in that order.
No nuclear is not cheap. You said yourself we should just subsidize it
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My understanding (which is limited to things I've read) of the nuclear cost issues stemmed from a few factors: NIMBYism lawsuits delaying work/political interference, limited manufacturing of specific reactor designs so benefits of scale could never take effect (most operating reactors are somewhat different designs), and retroactive regulatory compliance for plants under construction (not that I'm apposed to regulatory compliance but it did require a lot of reconstruction).
Surely a standardized reactor des
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While lawsuits and bureaucracy certainly contributed to that, it is by no means the only factor. I would say it also has a lot to do with the size and the complexity of the projects. It is like huge software projects almost always have cost overruns. Surely, standardized software design methodology would prevent this too, right? In practice it is never easy and the same is true for nuclear. On paper, it all looks good and simple, but it practice it quickly gets really complicated.
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At a lower price saving people real money each utility bill....
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The main problem with wind is it can change output quite rapidly and traditional gas and coal stations can take a couple of hours to ramp up and down. The grid is a balancing act you need to produce enough to satisfy demand. Producing too much increases the frequency and too little decreases the frequency it's too little that can produce problems a sudden failure of a station can cause a cascade failure if it isn't reacted to fast enough and this can be less than a second. There are different ways to manag
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I know nobody reads the story... But this is an old contract for a project going for a project opening now. Hinkley will open in 2025 or so...
"Walney Extension was among the first renewable projects to secure a so-called contract for difference (CFD) subsidy from the British government in 2014.
The contract guarantees it a minimum price for electricity of 150 pounds ($195) per megawatt hour (MWh) for 15 years.
Since this was awarded, the cost of offshore wind has fallen dramatically to a low of 57.50 pounds p
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From 2016 in the Telegraph (not really a supporter of this sort of thing):
"The cost of building offshore wind farms has fallen to a new low, with Sweden's Vattenfall winning contracts to build two projects in Danish waters for just over €60 (£51) per megawatt-hour (MWh)."
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You are comparing a price from 2014 for a plant which opened now to a plant opening (maybe) in 2025 or so. Guaranteed prices for new contracts for offshort wind are 60 £/MWh as of last year.
Re:Will this one lose money too? (Score:5, Informative)
Does that number include costs for post-operation dismantling of the facility, (etc.)
Yes. Have the wind farm operators any plans to fund the decommissioning of their offshore facility at end-of-life? God knows but by the time wind and weather have wrecked them the original builders will be long gone and unaccountable to anyone.
Offshore wind farm power availability is about 30% of dataplate so this new facility will produce, on average about 250MW, not the headline attention-grabbing absolute maximum of 659 MW. Some days it will produce a lot more, some days a lot less even if we need the electricity right then. The Hinkley Point C nuclear facility will produce 3.2GW for most of the time, not being dependent on weather conditions. Uptime for modern nuclear plants is about 80-85% or so and outages for refuelling and maintenance are usually pre-planned well in advance.
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https://qz.com/1348969/europes... [qz.com]
Not being dependent on weather conditions my arse.
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A number of river-sited reactors have curtailed output recently because they have limits on how much they can raise the river water temperatures with their condenser loops. This is also true for coal-fired and even solar thermal plants which use river water for a cold-sink. It's possible to use land-based evaporative systems for the cold-sink condensers but that uses up water and costs more so it's not common except in desert conditions where solar thermal generating plants like Tonopah deplete the local aq
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However, wind generating capacity does tend to be the greatest when we need lots of electricity. We tend to need the most power during the wet and windy winter months...when the wind bit of the wet and windy means wind generation is at or nearly at peak production.
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"Wet and windy" tends to be in the spring ("March winds and April showers") and autumn here in the UK. We often get long lulls with little or no wind in the mid-winter when it's dark eighteen hours of the day. A quick check on the Gridwatch site's records for 30 days between mid-December 2017 and mid-January 2018 shows peak wind generation of about 9.7GW (at 2017-12-31 13:15:33) but there was a lull lasting about 30 hours when the wind contribution to the grid was less than 1GW (2018-01-11 through 2018-01-1
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Hope and wishful thinking doesn't keep the lights on.
But being interconnected with the rest of Europe does, and being interconnected with the largest synchronized grid of the planet does.
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Have the wind farm operators any plans to fund the decommissioning of their offshore facility at end-of-life?
Since it won't be radioactive, their decommissioning estimates should actually be accurate, unlike every nuclear plant that was ever decommissioned.
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God knows but by the time wind and weather have wrecked them the original builders will be long gone and unaccountable to anyone.
And to where would they be gone?
Offshore wind farm power availability is about 30% of dataplate
Hint: don't build your wind plant at a place where you only get 30% nameplate.
Re:Will this one lose money too? (Score:5, Informative)
I live in Ireland and don't want any radiation in the sea here.
News that may shock you, I know but seawater is naturally radioactive, more than 10,000 Bequerels per cubic metre. Most of that activity is due to naturally-occurring potassium-40, the rest tends to be from various decay products from uranium-bearing rocks and other natural materials. A couple of Bq per cubic metre in seawater is from man-made sources, usually remnants from atmospheric nuclear weapons testing. Some more is waste isotopes dumped into the sewers by hospitals, ending up in outfalls near the coast in places like Boston (there was a panic by some people when I-131 was found in Boston harbour soon after the Fukushima reactors overheated and leaked radioactive material into the Pacific. It turned out to come from a hospital which didn't have to sequester radioactive waste the way a nuclear power plant legally has to).
Re:Will this one lose money too? (Score:4, Insightful)
And it cannot be throttled up or down to match need quickly.
I don't expect the two reactors at Hinkley C to be throttled at all, they'll run flat out 100% of their uptime since they'll only produce 15% of Britain's electricity demand at its lowest point (midsummer Sunday nighttime). There are a few other existing reactors providing a predictable 7GW or so but most of the on-demand generating capacity is met by fast-start combined-cycle gas turbines (CCGT) which can be brought on-line quickly to meet demand. Most of that 7GW of existing nuclear capacity is going away in the next ten to twenty years as the older AGRs are taken out of service -- there will be a single 1100MW PWR built in the 1990s left operating after the AGRs are shut down until Hinkley Point C comes on-line.
Having too much capacity is a totally different and much less serious problem than having too little (blackouts, rationing etc.) and weather-dependent renewables can't guarantee sufficiency to the same level that nuclear can.
Re:Will this one lose money too? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is a huge money pit and the UK should shut this off, or at least dial it back, until they can figure out how to better manage wind power than paying the windmill owners to not produce power.
Here's a suggestion: instead of having multiple private companies involved, this could all be money moving from one pocket of a public energy company to another pocket of the same company, without the tax payer being burdened by the inefficiency of this made-up "competitive market".
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https://www.energy-uk.org.uk/customers/about-your-energy-bill/the-breakdown-of-an-energy-bill.html
The total of environmental and social obligation costs is 8%. The average UK electricity bill is about £600, so the total obligation is thus £48, plus VAT (5%) or £50.
The elements going into the social and environmental obligation payment are numerous, and outlined on the page. It's nowhere near £200, though.
Re:World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes (Score:2)
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But you have to build windmills to maintain the industry.
You mean like how we have to keep building nuclear power to maintain the industry?
We were building nuclear power around the world like mad 40 or 50 years ago and then... we stopped. People have become fearful of nuclear power because it's a mystery to them. We have accidents like at Fukushima because the people that know how they work retired, have gone senile, or died. When we need experts to fix what's broken we are finding that the best people for the job are over 80 years old or under a headstone.
I k
Nuke is bad (Score:2)
>> Nuclear power is expensive now because we killed the industry 40 years ago.
Nuclear is expensive because the endless government and military subsidies stopped 40 Years ago.
And that was a good decision.
Re:World's largest 1 gas turbine, powers 0 homes (Score:3)
Could you quantify that? I'm not sure how much a single gas turbine on one small site should produce, but a quick web search shows that GE's gas turbines produce 34 MW to 557 MW [ge.com], so even the top end is less than the 659MW output given in the summary above.
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Now consider the 45% capacity factor for the wind.
At any given time the wind turbines might deliver 0% or 100%, ditto the gas turbines, although it that tends to be demand-led unless broken. The latter is why most plants have three or more gas turbines as the grid hookup won't generate revenue if you are waiting for a part for your single gas turbine, but wind farm failure is only typically a small fraction of the total. However, gas turbine capacity, if all power is demanded, is around 90% of nameplate. It's a limitation of the use of nameplate. If you si
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What is it with Europeans always measure things by soccer field size? Can we have a normal measurement, like Library of Congresses?
As it is outside the USA, they will call it football. Actually, I understand the US game of Hand Egg hast a field much the same size as what most humans call a football pitch
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As it is outside the USA, they will call it football. Actually, I understand the US game of Hand Egg hast a field much the same size as what most humans call a football pitch
So just to be clear, you're complaining about a game where you kick the ball at the end of every play being called "football" when you call the field for a game where you're not allowed to throw anything a "pitch"? You can't even spell Aluminum right.
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You're confusing the units. Football pitches measure area while Library of Congresses measure amount of data.
They don't always use football pitches. For very large areas it's number of Wales.
For some more interesting conversions see The Reg online standards convertor [theregister.co.uk]
Cherry picking facts (Score:3)
So a 145 sq km deployment of almost 100 turbines is equivalent to a single small utility scale power station.
With near as makes no difference zero carbon emissions or other pollutants, free and renewable fuel, uses no arable or otherwise useful land, little/no waste products, eliminates geopolitical influence of fossil fuel producing countries, cheaper if you eliminate subsidies from fossil fuel stations, and the list goes on. Just because we've built bigger fossil fuel plants doesn't mean this wind farm is a bad idea. Furthermore the dispersed deployment has no relevance at all since 3/4 of the earth's surface
Fossil fuels are subsidized heavily (Score:4, Informative)
Fossil fuels make energy when its needed for a low price.
False statement. Fossil fuels are heavily subsidized to the tune of about $5 Trillion annually [wikipedia.org] (that's 6% of global GDP) and that doesn't even include the costs of dealing with the pollution (including CO2) they are permitted to just dump in the atmosphere and elsewhere. Fossil fuels only seem cheap because we subsidize the crap out of them both directly and indirectly. Fully burdened they actually are more expensive than wind in a wide variety of use cases.
Not just when the wind is blowing within set limits.
Have you ever been off shore in the ocean? I'm guessing not because for all practical purposes the wind is ALWAYS blowing in the sorts of places they put a wind farm. There is some variability but it is far less than you are supposing.
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An interesting link there. What I found especially interesting was further down the page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
On March 13, 2013, Terry M. Dinan, senior advisor at the Congressional Budget Office, testified before the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology in the U.S. House of Representatives that federal energy tax subsidies would cost $16.4 billion that fiscal year, broken down as follows:
Renewable energy: $7.3 billion (45 percent)
Energy efficiency: $4.8 billion (29 percent)
Fossil fuels: $3.2 billion (20 percent)
Nuclear energy: $1.1 billion (7 percent)
Compare that to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Net electricity generation by energy source in 2016[1]
Natural gas (33.8%)
Coal (30.4%)
Nuclear (19.7%)
Hydro (6.5%)
Wind (5.5%)
Biomass (1.5%)
Other (2.6%)
I know I'm comparing different years here but I'd think it's safe to assume some year to year consistency on funding. We see nuclear power get 7% of the tax subsidies and yet produces 20% of the electricity we use. Renewable energy gets 45% of the tax subsidies but produces maybe 10% of the electricity.
Nuclear power is as "zero
Wind is definitely green (Score:3)
It's quite possible that this wind farm will end up producing as much CO2 as if they just burned natural gas in a combined cycle plant.
Some rando person's blog is hardly an authoritative source but I'm sure it feeds your confirmation bias. Plus did you even read your citation? It doesn't support your argument at all. Obviously you are a fan of nuclear and nuclear is fine but it isn't going to replace fossil fuel stations because it has its own severe problems - some political, some economic, and some technical. Nuclear carries risks that too many people are uncomfortable with. Nuclear will (and should) be a part of the solution but th
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I'm quoting the sibling post because it's got some good information that's being ignored out of a lack of moderation points for ACs.
That "rando" is Dr. Ripu Malhotra. I put his name in Google and found his author bio on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/Ripudam... [amazon.com]
His "Cubic Mile of Oil" blog is his means to updates to the book he co-authored of the same name.
https://www.amazon.com/Cubic-M... [amazon.com]
I believe this is an authoritative source.
Here's another "rando" that also happens to have a doctorate degree in how the environment works. Dr. Patrick Moore. He was a founding member of Greenpeace but left after they lost their sight on the science behind their motives.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/food... [msn.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Greenpeace hates chlorine, because chlorine was used as a weapon in World War One.
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Oh, it's worse than that. It's quite possible that this wind farm will end up producing as much CO2 as if they just burned natural gas in a combined cycle plant. [blogspot.com]
Your link actually says:
Analysis by Larsen and Rez shows that we would do better in terms of carbon emissions if instead of installing low capacity factor wind or solar systems and backing them with natural gas, we simply used a combined cycle natural gas plant.
which is something slightly different.
The abstract is:
The capacity factor of wind farms in different regions of the United States has been calculated from hourly wind data and the power curves of the wind turbines. In places with constant high winds like the Texas panhandle, capacity factors of 40% are possible. However the capacity factors in less favorable locations in Illinois or New York are below 20%. Reliable capacity factor estimates are important since displacing efficient combined cycle gas turbines from baseload generation by intermittent wind power could lead to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions. Before a site is considered capacity factors should be calculated from the power curve of the proposed wind turbine and measured wind data throughout the year, preferably at hub height.
So, noting that it mentions low capacity factor wind, the paper is presumably suggesting ones that are sited such they have a capacity factor of 20% are not very economically viable, but in the case of the TFA, we are talking 45% capacity, so the above criticism linked from the blog may not be relevant.
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To put that in perspective, the UK has 14GW of active installed coal fired power stations.
Not for long. All coal fired powerstations have to be closed in the next half decade and many of them have already begun to shut down if they haven't already. Near me there are three with a few miles of each other. Ferrybridge C has closed with its coal stockpile nowhere to be seen and a waste/biomass plant has been built on the same site, Eggborough is in the middle of closing down and hasn't generated power for over a year and Drax, which was one of Europe's largest coal fired stations is running at least
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