'World's Biggest Offshore Wind Farm' Produces First Power (cnbc.com) 205
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNBC: The Hornsea 2 offshore wind farm has produced its first power, Danish energy firm Orsted has said, with the announcement representing a significant milestone in the facility's development. Situated in waters around 89 kilometers off the U.K.'s east coast, the scale of Hornsea 2 is considerable. Spread across an area of 462 km2, it will use 165 turbines from Siemens Gamesa and boast a capacity of more than 1.3 gigawatts. The company says it will power "well over" 1.3 million homes when finished.
The project generated its first power late on Saturday night. According to Orsted, Hornsea 2 will assume the title of "world's largest operating offshore wind farm" once fully operational in 2022. The firm has also described Hornsea 2 as the "world's biggest offshore wind farm." That accolade, the company says, is currently held by Hornsea 1, the "sibling project" of Hornsea 2. "Together, the two projects will be capable of providing enough power for well over 2.3 million homes," Orsted said on Monday. In a statement issued alongside the company's announcement, Patrick Harnett, senior program director for Hornsea 2, said: "From here, we have the finishing line in sight as we install the remaining turbines and continue testing, commissioning, and energizing our wind farm into the new year."
The project generated its first power late on Saturday night. According to Orsted, Hornsea 2 will assume the title of "world's largest operating offshore wind farm" once fully operational in 2022. The firm has also described Hornsea 2 as the "world's biggest offshore wind farm." That accolade, the company says, is currently held by Hornsea 1, the "sibling project" of Hornsea 2. "Together, the two projects will be capable of providing enough power for well over 2.3 million homes," Orsted said on Monday. In a statement issued alongside the company's announcement, Patrick Harnett, senior program director for Hornsea 2, said: "From here, we have the finishing line in sight as we install the remaining turbines and continue testing, commissioning, and energizing our wind farm into the new year."
Finally, we can power the DrLorean! (Score:3)
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Actual wind generation statistics for Europe for today as of this morning (22 Dec 2021) - operating at 10% capacity across the continent.
Wish I had some f***ing Shell and Gasprom shares.
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But wait! (Score:3, Funny)
Won't all those fans affect the earth's rotation speed?
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This is Hornsea 2 which is used to balance out Hornsea 1. Smart people are working on this and aren't going to going to start spinning Earth like a top... again.
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So much power... (Score:2)
it will use 165 turbines from Siemens Gamesa and boast a capacity of more than 1.3 gigawatts.
So all this fuss for what is essentially a small nuclear power plant.
Re: So much power... (Score:2)
⦠that works part time
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So all this fuss for what is essentially a small nuclear power plant.
It's also a tiny fraction of the cost.
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It's also a tiny fraction of the cost.
How much did it cost? I tried to find it but it seems the news of this project producing first power crowds out what I'm looking for. How about I look to Wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It appears nuclear power costs less than offshore wind. That's even including the much discussed cost overruns at Hinkley Point C.
We can probably assume costs will come down with offshore wind. We can also assume nuclear power will get cheaper too. Now, which will get cheaper faster? We have a first of a
Re:So much power... (Score:5, Informative)
How much did it cost? I tried to find it but it seems the news of this project producing first power crowds out what I'm looking for. How about I look to Wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It appears nuclear power costs less than offshore wind. That's even including the much discussed cost overruns at Hinkley Point C.
No, it does not. These are abstract numbers across many projects. Hornsea 2 has a strike price significantly lower than Hinkley Point C, £68 vs £92. The strike price only kicks in if the market price is below the strike price. This means that Hinkley Point C will receive absolutely massive amounts of subsidies compared to Hornsea 2. If we assume a market price of £40, HPC will receive £52 and HS2 only £28. Double the subsidy. Hence nuclear is most definitely NOT cheaper than wind.
The most recent project in Denmark, Thor wind farm, was won without a strike price all together. Well, technically with a 0.0001 DKK / € 0.0000133 strike price. Instead the contractor RWE pays back to the government if the electricity price is above the strike price (which we can assume it will be at all times). The maximum payback is 2.4B DKK. Effectively this means that RWE is not receiving any subsidy but instead paying 2.4B DKK / 320M € for setting up the wind farm. They are confident that they can beat the market price AND pay 320M € AND still make a profit with a new constructed wind farm. No nuclear project is anywhere close to this. Nor are there any projects in the pipeline that even approaches this.
We can probably assume costs will come down with offshore wind. We can also assume nuclear power will get cheaper too. Now, which will get cheaper faster?
Wind is without a shadow of a doubt. It's evidently cheaper and has a much better leaning curve [ourworldindata.org].
Cost is an issue but it's not the only issue. There's not enough sea to put windmills into. They will need nuclear power too.
That is not true. The north sea has enough space to provide all of Europe with electricity. I'm not sure if it's a good idea. It will be cheaper to also have some solar, hydro etc. other places, but there are most definitely enough places for wind turbines.
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In fact the strike price for Hinkley Point C is well above £100 already. It was £92 at the very start years ago, but increases by the rate of inflation every year, even before the plant is finished.
Re:So much power... (Score:4, Informative)
The UK government has always subsidised the power cost from nuclear to allow it to compete in the power market.
Here's a quote from a Times Newspaper 01 December 2021 on Hinkley Point C.
"Key safety components in the UK’s first new nuclear power station for 30 years may need to be redesigned and the project could be delayed after defects were detected at a similar reactor in China. The £22 billion Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset is already well over budget and a decade late but the defects mean that the scheduled date for starting electricity generation, of June 2026, may have to be revised."
Quote from this Guardian article [theguardian.com]
"Hinkley Point will add between £10 and £15 a year to the average energy bill for 35 years, making it one of the most expensive energy projects undertaken. Under EDF Energy’s contract with the government, the French state-backed energy giant will earn at least £92.50 for every megawatt-hour produced at Hinkley Point for 35 years by charging households an extra levy on top of the market price for power. The average electricity price on the UK’s wholesale electricity market was between £55 and £65 per megawatt-hour last year."
EDF quoted in 2008 that price per MW hour would be about £45 - now its £92 - double the price and also double the price to build. And thats not including the probably underquoted £8b for decommissioning
Quote from below from this article [nuclearpolicy.info]
"As NFLA note in its response to that consultation, the Government calculated in 2008 that the construction cost of building two reactors at Hinkley Point C would be £4 billion. In 2012, EDF, the company leading the consortium to build Hinkley estimated the ‘overnight cost’ would be £12 billion. This increased to £14 billion in 2013, £16 billion in 2015, £18 billion in 2016 and the most recent estimate (June 2018) was for £19.6-20.3 billion. This new estimate for the project now comes in at between £21.5 and £22.5 billion, and that is before much of the more complicated work has even commenced."
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It appears nuclear power costs less than offshore wind.
You have been shown Lazard 2020 and know this is not correct. Why are you repeating this? You asked for up-to-date data, which was provided to you, but you refuse to use it. Why?
We can also assume nuclear power will get cheaper too.
Nuclear has been getting more expensive, so no, we cannot assume that. Wind has been getting cheaper.
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It appears nuclear power costs less than offshore wind. That's even including the much discussed cost overruns at Hinkley Point C.
Hinkley Point C isn't evening running yet and has constantly had its price projected upwards and it's completion date extended backwards. Please leave imaginary numbers for describing how electricity flows, not how much it costs.
But then even your imaginary costs don't help you. The world has a problem which needs solutions. Quick ones. Not ones which may start having an effect in 25 years (assuming we can get a reactor operational within that time, god knows we haven't had success in that time frame thus f
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You mean equivalent to a nuke?
Then write it.
As it is _no nuke_
Also: show a me a single reactor that does 1.3 GW. Yes, you will find some. But: most are in the 500MW range, and the site has 4 or 6 reactors.
So: what exactly is your point? You do not like that some countries build off shore wind farms? You invested into the wrong stock? Buy Siemens then. If there is either a new nuke or a new wind plant build: you can bet Siemens is involved in one way or the other ...
so much resources... (Score:2)
for so little power produced, according to electricitymap...
All the power to the US (Score:2)
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Dude, you're posting on Slashdot. Stop complaining about power used by data centers.
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They will never power homes.
Coal plants and if we are lucky natural gas plants will power all those homes.
This articles gives the misleading impression that whole cities will get renewable energy because of those turbines, but they won't.
This is all for the data centers.
And even that would be alright if these turbines would have been paid for with US tax money, but it is a g
A great British achievement. (Score:2)
Danish energy firm Orsted has said... it will use 165 turbines from Siemens Gamesa
What?
Finally! Do you know what this means? (Score:2)
EU is going to need every watt this year (Score:2)
Wind and solar are equal (Score:3, Interesting)
Fusion has a future, fission doesn't. Time to stop using the generic "nuclear" label.
Hydro and geothermal are great but there just ain't enough of them. And damming all rivers would be a mistake.
Solar and wind are both good in particular locations. But, as they progressively replace coal and gas, they also both need matching electrical batteries. Which will happen but does take a lot more investment than to date.
Batteries are still evolving too. Many new, albeit belated, chemistries being developed. I
Re:Wind and solar are equal (Score:5, Insightful)
Fusion has a future
Does it?
Let's say that we get to energy breakeven in a few decades.
That doesn't mean economic breakeven.
The ITER Tokamak cost $60B. It is plausible that someday we can build them to actually produce energy, and they will be cheaper. But they will have to be much, much, much, much cheaper to compete with wind and solar. There is currently no viable path to economic viability for fusion.
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Why does it have to be economically viable? Why does economics have to come above environmental considerations?
If fusion gives us clean, plentiful energy, why not subsidise the heck out of it and replace fission, coal, oil and natural gas?
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Why does it have to be economically viable?
Because insurgents will start installing solar panels on their roofs.
why not subsidise the heck out of it
Where are you going to get the money for the subsidies? By taxing wind turbines?
Re: Wind and solar are equal (Score:3)
Are deuterium and tritium considered clean and safe?
Re: Wind and solar are equal (Score:5, Interesting)
Deuterium is nonradioactive and totally safe. Your body contains about half a gram.
Tritium is radioactive but emits low-energy 18KeV beta radiation (electrons). A sheet of paper will stop it, or about 6 mm of air.
Tritium does not bioaccumulate and has a half-life of 12 years, so it doesn't hang around for long.
Tritium occurs naturally, generated by cosmic rays. The Pacific ocean has about 15 kg of tritium, mostly natural but some from Fukushima.
A bigger problem with fusion is neutron activation of structural material. But that can be ameliorated by using metals like zirconium with very small neutron cross-sections and covering most of the structure with a lithium blanket, which soaks up neutrons while generating fuel.
There are plenty of problems with the viability of fusion. Radiation isn't one of them.
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The ability of tritium to bioaccumulate is still an open debate in the scientific community. A lot more work has been done post-Fukushima, but it does appear that it can accumulate in some circumstances.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.go... [nih.gov]
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
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No Tritium in a commercial fusion plant.
Given that commercial fusion plants do not (yet) exist, that's merely a prediction that may or may not turn out to be true.
That is a prediction that _will_ come true. Had you actually understood what I wrote, you would now know that there is no source for Tritium that could power fusion on more than a small experimental level. Seriously.
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Deuterium is nonradioactive and totally safe. Your body contains about half a gram.
Tritium is radioactive but emits low-energy 18KeV beta radiation (electrons). A sheet of paper will stop it, or about 6 mm of air.
Tritium does not bioaccumulate and has a half-life of 12 years, so it doesn't hang around for long.
Tritium occurs naturally, generated by cosmic rays. The Pacific ocean has about 15 kg of tritium, mostly natural but some from Fukushima.
A bigger problem with fusion is neutron activation of structural material. But that can be ameliorated by using metals like zirconium with very small neutron cross-sections and covering most of the structure with a lithium blanket, which soaks up neutrons while generating fuel.
There are plenty of problems with the viability of fusion. Radiation isn't one of them.
You asked. /. answered. Thank you ShanghaiBill!
Neutrons are a problem [Re: Wind and solar are...] (Score:2)
There are plenty of problems with the viability of fusion. Radiation isn't one of them.
You asked. /. answered. Thank you ShanghaiBill!
Except the final conclusion was wrong. (the rest of the post was mostly accurate... only the last line was wrong.) There are plenty of problems with the viability of fusion. And radiation is one of them.
... and the post by ShanghaiBill even noticed said so:
A bigger problem with fusion is neutron activation of structural material.
Right. Neutrons are a radiation problem.
But that can be ameliorated by using metals like zirconium with very small neutron cross-sections and covering most of the structure with a lithium blanket, which soaks up neutrons while generating fuel.
Saying "there are approaches to dealing with the problem" is not the same as saying "this is a solved problem".
Neutrons are a problem.
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Why does it have to be economically viable? Why does economics have to come above environmental considerations?
If fusion gives us clean, plentiful energy, why not subsidise the heck out of it and replace fission, coal, oil and natural gas?
Government subsidy doesn't create wealth, it only redistributes it. Our energy sources must prove to be profitable or we will simply run out of other people's money to spend.
Economics have to come before environmental considerations because if we don't get more energy/money/whatever out than we put in then at some point we end up eating bark and sleeping in piles of leaves.
People have analyzed this to death. We know how much energy we get out per energy put in for every energy source available to us. We
Re:Wind and solar are equal (Score:5, Insightful)
Government subsidy doesn't create wealth, it only redistributes it.
This is a slogan, not an actual economic/capitalist principle. South Korea is a good example of how subsidies powered up SK's rise to rich industrialization. The Marshall Plan was, in essence, government (American) subsidies toward post-war European recovery, which helped created enormous wealth.
Subsidies are neither a silver bullet nor a poison pill. How they play out depend on a lot of factors. Same thing with increasing or decreasing taxation, increasing or decreasing the size or scope of government, etc.
There are way too many variables at play to simply say "X will work" or "Y will not work". People that engage in that type of talk are simply playing ideological extremism (left or right, both sides have extremists that continuously fuck it up for the rest of us.)
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For the moment, fusion doesn't gives us clean, plentiful energy - and there's no clear path for when it will.
(well, there is a clear path but the milestones go farther and farther away).
As for subsidizing the fusion energy... I would personally be OK to pay - let's say - double, as compared to existing energy. That's a big subsidy, but it still isn't enough for the fusion to break even and is entirely too much for industry.
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Why does it have to be economically viable? Why does economics have to come above environmental considerations?
If fusion gives us clean, plentiful energy, why not subsidise the heck out of it and replace fission, coal, oil and natural gas?
There's a limited amount of money available - actually in the case of the US or UK government that's a limited amount of effort really. If you put that effort towards one thing then you can't put it towards another. The numbers I'm about to give are a bit subject to discussion, but approximately, if you want to get 1MWh of electricity you can do that by spending $100 on nuclear or $10 on wind. That means that if you want to get rid of fossil fuel, use, for the same money you can eliminate ten times as mu
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There is currently no viable path to economic viability for fusion.
Yes there is. ITER costs $60 billion because they have to design and build a lot of its components as one-offs. For example, to build the central solenoid, General Atomics had to build new facilities and do R&D to develop new materials and fabrication technologies. Currently the capital requirement of solar is about $1 billion for a 1 GW facility. Once the tech is proven, I think they will get the cost down to that. If not tokamak, then other fusion designs such as MIT SPARC, MagLIF, Stellarator, tri-al
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ITER is not producing an excess of energy, and - considering every power use in the facility - is not intended to. It is intended to get a stable, self-sustainable fusion reaction.
One of the objective is:
"Maintain a fusion pulse for up to 8 minutes."
Another one is:
"Produce a steady-state plasma with a Q value greater than 5. (Q = 1 is scientific breakeven, as defined in fusion energy gain factor.)"
Meanwhile, the electromagnetic and neutron beam systems total some 50MW.
Even if fully successful, a 250MW produ
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ITER is a research reactor. research means it is exploratory, and has many more features than what an industrial device would require once the design is properly set in stone.
also, it is a prototype, they usually cost a lot more
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Re: Wind and solar are equal (Score:2)
I would argue that a government that could build one of these and eat the costs would see a significant return on investment. Massive, clean, unlimited power is a huge competitive and environmental advantage, not unlike the first railways. This is exactly what governments are good at. It could even be spun off into a private corporation later if need be (which I would be against, but it happens all the time to appease whiny capitalists).
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Fundamental research is not done because it will pay off short-term. It is done because its results will be beneficial forever. Your argument is flawed.
Re:Wind and solar are equal (Score:4, Informative)
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The Chinese HTR-PM reactor is a demonstration unit, producing around 200MWe. It's actually very old technology, with the design being an evolution of the German AVR research reactor that was operating in the 1960s.
The previous designs that it is based on all turned into nightmares to decommission. China hasn't said if it has a plan to fix that, or if it's just the usual "we'll figure something out when we get there".
Since it's just a demonstration reactor, the next stage is to build another demonstration re
The 1960s did it! (Re:Wind and solar are equal) (Score:3)
It's actually very old technology, with the design being an evolution of the German AVR research reactor that was operating in the 1960s.
Is there any technology in use today that isn't an evolution from something built in the 1960s?
Also unclear if it will ever be commercially viable.
Also a statement that can be applied to anything new today.
I could pick any new solar, wind, hydro, tidal, whatever power project and make a nearly identical observation. Anything more complicated than a shovel has something experimental about it, and raises questions on long term economic viability.
By the time they have proven it and come up with a decommissioning plan, it will be far too late to help with climate change.
No, that's not true. Every prototype of any low CO2 technology brings us closer to solving global warming. This i
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Where does this /. myth come from that a molten salt reactor can "consume atomic waste"?
It can't. Nothing to discuss about that. It needs an even higher enrichment level than a normal reactor. There is no way it can either burn spent fuel OR the real waste: the fission products of a rector.
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Where does this /. myth come from that a molten salt reactor can "consume atomic waste"?
It can't. Nothing to discuss about that.
When you close yourself off to discussion you close off the ability to learn about why you're wrong. Both Denmark and Russia are building MSRs which which will use plutonium recovered from spent fuel from conventional reactors as their primary fuel source. This is not a complex purification and in fact is relatively easy compared to enriching uranium.
Just because Transatomic in the USA failed to make their MSR design capable of consuming spent fuel doesn't mean that MSR can't do it.
Or maybe it's a language
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Both Denmark and Russia are building MSRs which which will use plutonium recovered from spent fuel
That is not the same as "burning spend fuel".
It is reprocessed.
Every reactor can burn reprocessed fuel.
But it "can" be designed as such,
No it can't. Physically impossible.
You might feed it with it, and it might not harm the reactor or the reaction: but the wast will not go away. It just will be inside of a reactor.
Sooner or later, you just end up with more waste.
Burning up waste: not impossible, but not done (Score:2)
Both Denmark and Russia are building MSRs which which will use plutonium recovered from spent fuel
That is not the same as "burning spend fuel".
It is reprocessed. Every reactor can burn reprocessed fuel.
Insightful. Reprocessing fuel has its own set of problems, of course.
But it "can" be designed as such,
No it can't. Physically impossible.
mmm, I think you're a little bit too dogmatic here. No, it's not "physically impossible". Indeed, it's not demonstrated technology, if that's what you mean, and it would be very complex to burn up the stuff you want to get rid of without in the process making other stuff that you also don't want. But if you're saying "it's physically impossible," you need to quote a law of physics that makes it impossible.
"So hard that we don't know how to
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Solar and wind are both good in particular locations. But, as they progressively replace coal and gas, they also both need matching electrical batteries. Which will happen but does take a lot more investment than to date.
Batteries aren't the only way to make up the periodic shortfalls from renewable energy. Many gas turbine plants are being repurposed from providing baseload to being spun up rapidly to meet peak demand:
The rapid growth in renewables—notably wind and solar power—is changing the electricity supply landscape and how gas turbines are being called on to generate to the grid. The modern power grid needs intelligent resources able to ramp up and down swiftly, efficiently, and repeatedly.
Increasingly, network operators are giving dispatch priority to renewable energy. Due to these industry changes, gas turbine operators are taking on an additional new role: switching from providing baseload to providing power at times of peak demand. Plant flexibility is critical for on-call gas turbine generation. Gas turbine plants that can be dispatched within minutes are important assets for balancing electric system loads and maintaining grid reliability.
https://www.ge.com/power/trans... [ge.com]
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There's been no shortage of investment for the last 40 years.
And no shortage of progress.
Materials will be one big cost, labor is another. Heating up some rocks is a way to store energy that doesn't require any special materials, and won't involve much for maintenance.
Efficiency affects cost, so what it the ultimate cost here?
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Nuclear is the cleanest and best form of energy.
This is true. I advocate nukes regularly and I don't believe the UK has the capacity for enough renewables.
Other forms including wind are useless. Wind is an eyesore, shipping lane disruptor,
This is daft. I stayed on the coast near several wind farms. Greater Gabbard, Galloper and the London Array:
https://www.openstreetmap.org/... [openstreetmap.org]
In between the there is Felixtowe, the UK's largest container port. Turns out it's easier to build wind turbines on sand banks, prec
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Nuclear is the cleanest and best form of energy.
This is true. I advocate nukes regularly and I don't believe the UK has the capacity for enough renewables.
The UK is blessed with a lot of windy coastline, so is quite well set up for some forms of renewables. It's shot itself in the foot in terms of pan-European energy trading so might need to rely on nuclear, but it's expensive - the UK government is having to massively subsidise it to get it built, so I am not sure it counts as 'best'. In terms of cleanest (e.g. gCO2/W on full lifecycle), wind is now close to nuclear. Wind's gCO2 is a bit more front-loaded, though, as it requires more construction.
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The UK is blessed with a lot of windy coastline, so is quite well set up for some forms of renewables.
Quite well, but not well enough. We can get a lot of renewables, but we can't do it all.
the UK government is having to massively subsidise it to get it built, so I am not sure it counts as 'best'.
We don't seem to be able to match the French in this regard. The British Establishment is crap at this kind of thing: pile in development costs, drop it after then expensive R&D has been done in favour of pro
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I don't know why anyone voted the parent down.
Here is the UK Energy Dashboard page: https://www.energydashboard.co... [energydashboard.co.uk]
As I write, the proportions of UK energy being generated are:
Solar 1%
Wind 14%
Nuclear 14%
Gas 52%
Even that is misleading, because 6% comes from "Imports" - presumably nuclear-generated electricity from France. I have seen wind's contribution vary from over half to a pathetic 4% or so, with gas taking up the slack. Good old reliable nuclear just keeps chugging on, day after day, even though gove
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One million square meters is exactly one square kilometer. Assuming a team of 10 people with a truck can handle 100 square meters a day (removing and installing about 20 solar panels a day,) a staff of 100,000 people can take care of it (revenue from the panels will be a couple hundred billion of dollars a year, so the salary of 100,000 people is easy.) And that was with the 10% efficincy number wasn't it? Also, by the way, the panels can be recycled, not trashed. Also a lot of the solar panels will be on t
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but the US has vast areas of desert that nobody lives on and isn't farming anything.
But it is an important sand breeding area!!
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One million square meters is exactly one square kilometer. Assuming a team of 10 people with a truck can handle 100 square meters a day (removing and installing about 20 solar panels a day,) a staff of 100,000 people can take care of it (revenue from the panels will be a couple hundred billion of dollars a year, so the salary of 100,000 people is easy.) And that was with the 10% efficincy number wasn't it? Also, by the way, the panels can be recycled, not trashed. Also a lot of the solar panels will be on the rooftops of homes not in the desert. Furthermore, nearly all the desert land in the USA is not being used for anything .. I don't know about land availability in the UK, but the US has vast areas of desert that nobody lives on and isn't farming anything.
That's only the labor of installing the panels. You need even more people to work the factories to build those panels. Your estimate needs more detail.
Compare that to the labor and materials required for nuclear fission. An all nuclear fission powered economy is just as much a fantasy as an all solar powered economy but it makes for an interesting thought experiment to see how our options compare.
Right now the USA gets about 10% of all it's energy needs from nuclear power. Source: https://en.wikipedia.o [wikipedia.org]
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That's only the labor of installing the panels. You need even more people to work the factories to build those panels.
It will be automated. It is being automated.
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https://www.disclose.tv/wp-con... [disclose.tv]
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roadmaptonowhere.com is a crappy blog written by 2 non-scientists. It's a worthless source. You're probably one of the authors - "Mike Conley"?
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Here's a few more subject matter experts that evaluated Jacobson's work.
https://blogs.scientificameric... [scientificamerican.com]
It's not just "2 non-scientists" that call out Jacobson for his poorly done paper. What does Jacobson do to defend his paper? He takes people to court for defamation.
https://environmentalprogress.... [environmen...ogress.org]
I don't know how that ended, I just tripped across that by putting "Mark Jacobson" and a number of other terms to narrow it down to the person of interest into a search engine. You are not making an argume
Re:Solar power is shitty (Re:Wind power is shitty) (Score:4, Interesting)
ROADMAP TO NOWHERE
The Myth of Powering the Nation With Renewable Energy by Mike Conley and Tim Maloney
December 2017
Scientific American:
Landmark 100 Percent Renewable Energy Study Flawed, Say 21 Leading Experts
By Robert Fares on June 23, 2017
There are clearly better sources that you could use than that crappy blog "roadmaptonowhere.com", that were written several months before the crappy blog. People make fun of you for quoting from roadmaptonowhere almost every time you mention it.
I suspect the reason you cling to it is because it comes up with some speculative numbers which suit your agenda - numbers that no real scientific paper would consider publishing.
Find some numbers from peer-reviewed papers published in respected scientific journals, and I'll listen. Post wildly speculative figures from a joke of a blog, and get called out on it every time. If you started using proper sources, you might have some credibility on this site.
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"Compared to other options solar power is shitty." ...) solar to residential hot water is incredibly common.
For "cold but with quite a bit of sun" areas, home thermal solar is quite effective for heating (at least some of the time, several months per year).
Also, for "warm/hot with quite a bit of sun" areas (Greece, Turkey,
Electricity is another thing
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Why not blanket the deserts and rooftops with solar?
This question was asked, and it was investigated by Dr. David MacKay shortly before he was appointed Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change. http://www.withouthotair.com/c... [withouthotair.com]
Still using 15 year-old data despite having been shown new data? You said you would update your data if shown new. You were, you didn't. Why?
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actual lifespan is about 25 years at this point...
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actual lifespan is about 25 years at this point...
There is very little degradation of output after 25 years projected with modern designs, unless there is something unexpected that will happen to them in the future that the physics doesn't predict. It's more that after a certain time, given the rapid improvement of panels, you are better off replacing them.
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2. Polluting now in some cases until the grid becomes and all tools/vehicles are EV or hydrogen powered
3. Decommissioning - see 2 and they are recycled
Patience Grasshopper, Rome wasn't built in a day
Re:Bad time to become a goose... (Score:4, Funny)
If this does end up being a big bird killer . . .
First reply and someone has to make this about attacking Big Bird. Slashdot these days!
Re: Bad time to become a goose... (Score:4, Interesting)
It is worth noting that wind turbines tend to be more of an issue for bats than birds. A lot of wind turbines are on bat migratory routes, and the change in pressure basically makes their lungs burst. (The solution is simple; idle/draw down the speed of the turbines during certain times of year, at certain times of day, but many operators don't want to give up that generation time.)
Re:Nameplate capacity != produced power (Score:5, Informative)
You obviously have mixed the units up. It's 1.3 GW, NOT 1.3 GWh/year. You assume a 36% efficiency relative to the nameplate capacity, that will yield 468 MWh in average EVERY HOUR. That's 4100 GWh/year, 4.1 TWh/year. Your numbers are off by four orders of magnitude.
Also the average power consumption is NOT 11 MWh in Europe, it's more like 4 MWh, but indeed rising due to "rich people things" as you mockingly put it.
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Also, electric car consume their energy from the electric grid not from gasoline/diesel. And the European car market is getting more and more electric.
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Also, electric car consume their energy from the electric grid not from gasoline/diesel. And the European car market is getting more and more electric.
True, but the amount of extra electricity consumption, especially after you discount the electricity used for oil refining, is actually rather minuscule. In addition EV's can normally do scheduled charging, which is very useful in conjunction with wind farms. Heating poses a bigger challenge.
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Heating poses a bigger challenge.
Solar water heaters are surprisingly cheap, low-tech, low-maintenance, & efficient. In southern Europe, they make a lot of sense. Then there's better housing design, i.e. more efficient insulation & heating, & denser occupancy buildings (luxurious apartments rather than crappy houses for the same price), & better urban design, i.e. shorter distances to travel, amenities closer by, better public mass-transportation, etc.. Europe's already pretty good for this. Large parts of North America, on
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I agree - but the parent was talking about average power consumption growing due to "rich people things", and electric car charging at home goes straight into that average (where industry, transportation, ... is not included).
Heating can also be scheduled - with a 2,000 liter hot water tank you can have a couple of days of home heating, and a 100 liter hot water tank could cover hot water needs for a day too.
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I agree - but the parent was talking about average power consumption growing due to "rich people things", and electric car charging at home goes straight into that average (where industry, transportation, ... is not included).
Ahh yes. Sorry. That is true.
Heating can also be scheduled - with a 2,000 liter hot water tank you can have a couple of days of home heating, and a 100 liter hot water tank could cover hot water needs for a day too.
That is also true and a very simple, cheap and straight forward "energy storage" solution. Unfortunately for practical reasons that is on a rather long time scale. If you have a house, switching to an EV is normally quite easy. Making room for a 2000 liter water tank OTOH is not a trivial task.
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The concept the baseload is largely obsolete anyway. At grid scale there is a desire to buy power from the cheapest source available, be that coal/gas/nuclear, renewables or imported via HVDC links. When energy is cheap the "baseload" generators, especially nuclear, end up having to pay people to use their power. That's why the operators often look for guaranteed prices as part of their subsidies.
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Windmills are only producing 40% of the time (at best) and then produce 90% of their capacity (at best).
Your figures are out of date. Some of the modern wind farms around the UK provide, long-term, 50% of nameplate.
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165 turbines to power 1.3 million homes you say - that works out to almost 7900 homes per turbine. Sounds fishy to me.. at the very least there's no way in hell that includes any heating power at all.
What seems to be the issue? 1.3 GW at 35% capacity factor is about 4000 GWh/year. That would work out to about 3100 kWh/year for an average home. Maybe a bit on the low side, but not totally off for european homes.
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The plant is brand new. How do you know the capacity factor of it?
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The plant is brand new. How do you know the capacity factor of it?
I don't know, I'm guessing. 35% is a fair and conservative guess for offshore wind. It might even approach 50%, but it's not going to be 5% or 85%.
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Modern turbines have capacity factors around 50%.
Yeah, most likely it will be more than 35% and maybe even more than 50%. However in the furure, as the amount of wind in the grid increases, we should expect the capacity factor to drop a bit. This was just a conservative estimate, since the OP thought is sounded suspiciously optimistic.
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It is not the turbine that makes the CF, but the place, and hence the wind there.
Every damn turbine has a CF of 100% if it is constantly be blown at with rated wind speed - and up to 400% CF if the wind is significantly higher and the turbine is not too big that it has to speed down for safety reasons.
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It is not the turbine that makes the CF, but the place, and hence the wind there.
No, it's also the design of the turbine and the range of wind speeds at which it can generate particular power level, and the design of the wind farm as a whole such that there is minimum occlusion of turbines by others. Other factors such as maintenance also come into play.
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As long as you don't have the plant run for a while and compare name plate with actually yield: you have no capacity factor
It most likely will be around or above 85%. Hint: it is an offshore plant.
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1.3 gigawatts. The company says it will power "well over" 1.3 million homes when finished.
What seems to be the issue? 1.3 GW at 35% capacity factor is about 4000 GWh/year. That would work out to about 3100 kWh/year for an average home. Maybe a bit on the low side, but not totally off for european homes.
We live in Europe, in a new (and hence, relatively efficient) house. Our heating is electrical (heat-pump), which is what houses are now supposed to install. We use about 9000kwh/year. You're only going to get 3000kwh/year in a building that heats with oil or gas.
I detest articles that measure power in "number of homes", because they never state their assumptions, and their assumptions are always ridiculous.
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We live in Europe, in a new (and hence, relatively efficient) house. Our heating is electrical (heat-pump), which is what houses are now supposed to install. We use about 9000kwh/year. You're only going to get 3000kwh/year in a building that heats with oil or gas.
Yes, 3000 kWh/y is the normal consumption for people living in apartments in. For houses it's around 4000 kWh/y. Also district heating in Europe is common and isn't going anywhere,
I too have heat pump, two EV's and four children. That also eats a lot of electricity. That's 7000 kWh for the heating (old house), 3000 and 5000 for each car respectively and around 5000 for the all the rest. Yeah, around 20000 kWh/y. But it's not representative for the vast amount of households.
I detest articles that measure power in "number of homes", because they never state their assumptions, and their assumptions are always ridiculous.
Yes, it's stupid.
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The "1.3 million homes" number was based on the UK government figures for offshore wind load factor of 38.6% (5-year average, 2013-2017) and an annual household consumption of 3,828 kWh (2017).
Source: Ørsted Hornsea Two Offshore Wind Farm [azureedge.net]
Hornsea 1 had a load factor of 48.4% last year, and Hornsea 2 will be right next door, so I imagine in practice it will have a similar load factor.
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they are probably using the total usage of an average household for its claim (as everyone does)
That seems to fit. From Uksave: How much energy does the average UK household consume? [usave.co.uk]
According to Ofgem, the average household in the UK has 2.4 people living in it, and uses 2,900 kWh of electricity...