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.

Comments

Re:30 MW for $256M

[blindseer]

A generous subsidy deal from the Scottish government made the project viable.

It's not "their" money that's being spent, it's other people's money. I don't have a problem if people want to invest their own money in an energy project. I have a problem when it's my money spent on an energy project.

I don't live in Scotland and I don't pay Scottish taxes so this does not affect me directly. As long as this stupid idea stays there I'll still be disappointed in the Scottish taxpayers getting sucked into this but it's no real cost to me. When/if this comes to the USA then I see it as a problem.

Honest businessmen take their ideas to investors to fund a project. They will make a case and if they can convince the people with the money that the risk is worth the potential reward then things happen. Dishonest businessmen take their ideas to governments. Senators don't care about making good investments, they are looking to buy campaign donations with taxpayers' money. These kind of investments are money laundering schemes.

These wind subsidies just lead to corruption, expensive energy, higher taxes, and often times little real CO2 reductions to show for it. When the wind blows the utilities are forced by law to pay the wind farms for that energy whether they need it or not. Also while the wind blows the coal plants are still burning coal even if they are not producing any electricity. The boilers need to be kept hot or they'll take hours to days come back on line after the wind stops. If the boilers are allowed to cool then a lot of coal needs to be burned to get them back to temperature, while they produce no electricity. Alternatively when the wind stops blowing something has to make up for the lost power, this is usually gas turbines. Gas turbines burn twice as much fuel compared to combined cycle plants for the same energy produced.

Unless this wind is coupled with some sort of energy storage, "smart grid", and/or other means to match the load to this shifting supply there is going to be a lot of CO2 burned, wind blowing or not.

Every time I see wind power deployed there will be someone that does an honest story on the CO2 released and it's, nothing changed, an increase, or the wind simply did not blow enough to make a difference but the windmill owners still demand payment.

I say fuck them. If they can't figure out how to make a profit on this then they can go bankrupt. Part of the bankruptcy deal is cleaning up the mess they made in the ocean. Make the site better than it was before. Oh, and pay back what they took for the "jump start" money, because that money is for winners. There's just one lump of money and it could grow a little every year. The first one to consistently turn a profit keeps the money. After that we've demonstrated that wind is profitable and no further government investment is needed.