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World's First Floating Windfarm To Take Shape Off Coast of Scotland (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: The world's first floating windfarm has taken to the seas in a sign that a technology once confined to research and development drawing boards is finally ready to unlock expanses of ocean for generating renewable power. After two turbines were floated this week, five now bob gently in the deep waters of a fjord on the western coast of Norway ready to be tugged across the North Sea to their final destination off north-east Scotland. The ~$256 million Hywind project is unusual not just because of the pioneering technology involved, which uses a 78-meter-tall underwater ballast and three mooring lines that will be attached to the seabed to keep the turbines upright. It is also notable because the developer is not a renewable energy firm but Norway's Statoil, which is looking to diversify away from carbon-based fuels.
Installed cost of over $8500 per kW.
It is expensive because it is the first of its kind. We will learn from it, and version 2.0 will be better.
A gas fired combined cycle plant runs from $500 to $1000 per kW.
That is the installation cost. You still have to buy gas. Of course the gas will be cheaper because that is mature technology, and many of the costs are externalized.
Absolutely stupid.
If you only look at the short term gain, yes. If you consider the long term, including the value of knowledge, then no.
The first chip to roll of an Intel stepper costs a lot too. Doesn't mean Intel should have stuck with the 4004.
I love the idea of somebody telling an oil company that they don't know how to make money.
"Old man yells at systemd"
What of the external costs of wind power? We know that there are some.
Indeed. When wind turbines spin, they suck angular momentum out of the earth, causing it to slow, and eventually fall into the sun. Besides that, is there some other external costs we should know about?
Local climate is affected in terms of temperature and rainfall.
Wow. Slightly less rain falling on the North Sea will have devastating consequences. I can't imagine how humanity will survive.
The development is entirely reasonable, and follows the normal pattern of risk reduction in an emerging technology.
Oil drilling started off on land, then it moved to shallow waters, then it moved to deep waters. The technology developed on the easiest sites then moved to the harder sites when there were not enough easy sites.
Some of the first wind farms in the UK were on Scottish islands. Not only did they have plenty of wind, the inhabitants of the islands used diesel generators, which were over four times the cost of mainland electricity; so the site was likely to be profitable even if it used first-generation parts. It reduced the risk of a highly visible venture site being unprofitable, and blocking the chance of making others.
Putting windmills in shallow water is quite like building them on land. You sink piles into shallow water or boggy land. The existing technologies can be used with longer piles, but in the end another solution is going to be cheaper. The cheaper solution is going to be anchored platforms. The people with the most experience of these are oil companies.
Instead of asking, "why an oil company?", ask "why not all oil companies with offshore drilling?". The US division - fossil fuels are freedom, wind and renewables are tree-hugging socialism - does not hold in Europe.
"When/if this comes to the USA then I see it as a problem." governments still subsidise decades old energy systems that should be able to stand on their own 2 feet decades ago so why is it different when the energy is renewable?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)