Slashdot Mirror
World's First Floating Wind Farm Emerges Off Coast of Scotland (bbc.co.uk)
AmiMoJo writes: The world's first full-scale floating wind farm has started to take shape off the north-east coast of Scotland. The revolutionary technology will allow wind power to be harvested in waters too deep for the current conventional bottom-standing turbines. The manufacturer hopes to cash in on a boom in the technology, especially in Japan and the west coast of the U.S., where waters are deep. The tower, including the blades, stretches to 175m and weighs 11,500 tons. The price of energy from bottom-standing offshore wind farms has plummeted 32% since 2012, and is now four years ahead of the government's expected target. Another big price drop is expected, taking offshore wind to a much lower price than new nuclear power.
Note that there's no mentioned of a time frame. I mean, "thousands" of birds a day? We should move them. "thousands" of birds a year? I'm a bit less concerned. "thousands" of birds a decade?
It is pretty much Bullshit. Birds manage to avoid all manner of moving things.
It is also amusing to see my coal burning energy friends and their deep and abiding concern bout the birds - especially the ones who shoot anything that flies for the Lulz.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If this is true, these things a gigantic...
There are indeed gigantic. There are several big advantages to hugeness:
1. The winds are steadier and stronger the higher you go. Since power production goes up as the cube of the wind speed, this makes a big difference.
2. There is a lot less salt up high. It drops off nearly exponentially.
3. Much of the maintenance scales less than linearly with turbine size, so it is more cost effective with big turbines.
Build it like an oil drilling platform.
They are. This wind farm is being built by Statoil, the Norwegian state oil company. Their expertise in building floating oil platforms, and their existing construction infrastructure, made them the obvious choice. The platforms are being built in a Norwegian fiord and then towed across the North Sea to Scotland.
yeah, the scale of these things is becoming increasingly ridiculous.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Is there a solution to repel birds?
The solution is better education, especially in math, science, and critical thinking. Once we have done that, people will no longer be stupid enough to believe that the "bird problem" is a real issue.
The best estimate for bird deaths from wind turbines is between 140,000 to 328,000 in North America
... and 3.7B birds are killed annually by domestic and feral cats in America. That is at least 10,000 times more.
The blades can be turned side on, known as feathering, to prevent overspeed.
Used in aviation for the last 60 years.
Actually no, the turbines are independent of line frequency. Unless there's something modifying things, they will spin at the optimal speed to extract the maximum amount of energy out of the wind.
The trick here is that the power goes through a high voltage DC step (and in this case, I presume the transmission to shore will be done using HVDC) then back through utility-scale inverters and into the AC used on the grid. The reason why you see them all spinning at the same speed is that the ones in shot are in similar wind conditions, so will be turning at the same speed (or at their max speed, whichever is lower).
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
I oppose them because plans for and the cost of decommissioning them is not part of the budget planning.
Get your legal system fixed!
Also, there are environmental concerns not well researched and understood yet, like underseas power cables and their impact on oceanic marine life with electrical sensory organs. Sharks have displayed problems from low voltage underseas cables, even when quite thickly insulated. It may well be ok, but I still want a bit more research before jumping on something because ooh windcraft!
Underwater power cables exists for many years, probably for over a century, and the technology plus environmental impact is well understood.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
If you have evidence that turbines disproportionately affect certain species, please cite it.
Otherwise, this chart shows that windows, communication towers, and even high-tension wires each kill thousands of times more birds annually, and those things are everywhere.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
you'd be lucky if you could find a spot in the North Sea that isn't windy
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
https://www.nature.com/article...
"If we get air cooled nuclear power then I have my doubts that even wind can compete on being as cheap or "green"." - no-one who promotes nuclear seems to include the extortionate build/decommission costs or subsidies given to nuclear industry. http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-...
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
I'm just a little bit skeptical about the price and.. ..well. in the blurb it uses sneaky word tactics. see how it says that a price drop is expected. and that would make it cheaper than nuclear.
It's not that hard to be cheaper than nuclear when you consider ALL the costs and the amount of regulation needed to ensure safety. The full cost of insuring nuclear tends to get overlooked. I'm not aware of any fission plant that does not require a nation state to provide insurance guarantees in order to get built. While they are relatively safe in general, no private insurance company is going to write a policy against something like Chernobyl. Nuclear is cost competitive with subsidies (insurance and otherwise) but it's not so cheap that you cannot imagine solar or wind being cheaper in the right circumstances. Not to mention that the cost of solar and wind generation are falling MUCH faster than the cost of nuclear fission generation. I don't have any principled objections to fission generation (and I prefer it to fossil fuels) but let's not pretend it's "too cheap to meter".
(presumably nuclear with nuclear plant profits though calculated in, making it kinda like "cheaper than oil" when oil has plenty of profit built into it, making the price flexible downwards as soon as someone has a better energy source)
Well, oil and other fossil fuels get subsidies amounting to about $5 Trillion globally every year (that's about 6% of global GDP in case you wondered) and I'm not even counting the cost of the environmental problems they cause. And yes, the profits are part of the equation too but if a new energy source (say solar) gets cheap enough to eat into the profit margins of oil then it is by definition competitive and that's a good thing. And frankly if I have my choice between a relatively clean renewable energy source and fossil fuels for about the same cost then it is a no brainer.