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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.
then sinks
Godless heathens, everyone knows Jesus only wants coal fired power plants.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Some environmentalists will oppose this because of presumed bird mortality, and many slash dotters who are definitely not environmentalists will oppose this because it is an energy source they hate.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The next one will catch fire, fall over and sink.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
Trump hates wind farms.
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.
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.
It is not floating as it is tied to the bottom.
So do ships stop floating when they drop anchor?
That helicopter pilot better be careful. According to RSPB, anything flying in the vicinity of a wind turbine is instantly murdered.
At deep sea most bird flight paths are in migratory flocks. These are predictable and can be used to determine the least impact sites at which to install wind farms.
Using radar data, the turbines can also be slowed when a flock approaches, reducing wake vortices (which can explode bird lungs) and making the blades more avoidable during the day. At night, many species fly much higher than turbines.
Studies have also shown that some species adjust their migratory flight paths to avoid wind farms.
Now, whether wind companies act responsibly is something that needs an eye kept on it. However, due to the propensity of crazy people to tilt at wind projects, the expansion so far seems to have been extra careful. Ironically, fossil fuel industry astroturf campaigns to obstruct wind farm growth have served an environmental purpose... though whether that balances the damage caused by the delay they have managed to accrue is highly doubtful.
Someone had to do it.
Well, strictly speaking, I guess it depends on how far from the bottom the object is tied.
... and 3.7B birds are killed annually by domestic and feral cats in America. That is at least 10,000 times more.
Yeah, but the amount of eagles, albatrosses and lapwings and auks that Felix lays low is rather low. It's not about numbers, but impact on individual species and populations.
It is pretty much Bullshit. Birds manage to avoid all manner of moving things.
The problem isn't birds hitting or being hit by the blades, but the vortices they create, which are strong enough to collapse bird lungs even when they clear the blade by a good margin. The birds have no natural instinct to detect and avoid invisible dangers normally not present in nature.
A secondary problem (which is less of a problem in this case) is the noise they cause, which interrupts courting and nesting.
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...
It is only the third time they posted this story, it is a bit early to declare it perpetual.
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"?
https://www.nature.com/article...
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.