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First Floating Wind Farm Delivers Electricity (arstechnica.com)
The world's first floating offshore wind farm began delivering electricity to the Scottish grid today. "The 30MW installation, situated 25km (15.5mi) from Peterhead in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, will demonstrate that offshore wind energy can be harvested in deep waters, miles away from land, where installing giant turbines was once impractical or impossible," reports Ars Technica. "At peak capacity, the wind farm will produce enough electricity to power 20,000 Scottish homes." From the report: The installation, called Hywind Scotland, is also interesting because it was built by Statoil, a Norwegian mega-corporation known for offshore oil drilling. Statoil has pursued offshore wind projects in recent years, using the companyâ(TM)s experience building and managing infrastructure in difficult open sea conditions to its advantage. Hywind Scotland began producing power in September, and today it starts delivering electricity to the Scottish grid. Now, all that's left is for Statoil and its partner company Masdar to install a 1MWh lithium-ion battery, charmingly called âoeBatwind,â on shore. Batwind will help the offshore system regulate power delivery and optimize output. After a number of small demonstration projects, the five 6MW turbines are the first commercial turbines to lack a firm attachment to the seafloor. They're held in place using three giant suction anchors, which are commonly used in offshore oil drilling. Essentially, an enormous, empty, upside-down âoebucketâ is placed on the seafloor, and air is sucked out of the bucket, which forces the bucket downward, further into the seafloor sediment. The report mentions a 2013 video that shows how offshore wind farms work.
i guess.
Step one, put all your knowledge into a âoebucketâ
For letting them be your friend, again.
It's a dumb joke... but it's mine.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
A typical power plant is often on the order of 100s of MW http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/how-is-electricity-measured.html, but this is of course what will be just the first such, and more will follow. Since they have a large battery farm, it will also not suffer from the general problem that many solar and wind farms have of being essentially intermittent in their production and often producing more power than one needs sometimes with no way to store it. Taken together with the fact that new wind systems are so efficient that many are repowering wind farms early https://electrek.co/2017/10/16/new-wind-turbine-efficiency-so-great-utilities-repowering-farms-early/, it appears that we're finally at a point where wind is starting to be a a serious competitor. Even if natural as were not killing coal and oil, solar and wind would seem to be doing almost as effective a job.
Salt water and electrical stuff tend to not mix, so how do they send (high voltage?) power - Must be some impressive insulation.
it goesh rite up yer batty
Essentially, an enormous, empty, upside-down âoebucketâ is placed on the seafloor, and air is sucked out of the bucket, which forces the bucket downward, further into the seafloor sediment.
If there's a lot of air in that bucket, you're going to have a hard time getting it to the bottom. I'd guess they actually just open the suction hole and let the air flow out and fill it with water as they're lowering it, then once it's on the bottom they suck water out. The flow of water over the bottom edge seems like it would loosen the sand and make it easier for the bucket to sink, at the same time that the water pressure on top of the bucket (due to the pressure differential from the suction) would force it downward.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
the batty wind upon his toy
Sponsored by Big Coal will 'accidentally' collide with them all. (Sorry we thought you were a lighthouse).
#Maga USA #1!
As someone who thinks you're an extremely stupid piece of whale excrement, I assume you know nothing at all about anything. I am sure Statoil has no engineers on staff to figure stuff out. They totally missed the boat by not contacting Mr. AC EE.
Please drown yourself in a kiddie pool.
It's another possibility.
And never forgetting that no fossil fuel would be remotely competitive if their externalised costs were included on the sticker.
Your premise is correct but let's be accurate. Yes you are correct that fossil fuels do not have to include the cost of all their externalities (pollution, carbon, etc) which would add VERY substantially to their price. Not to mention the subsidies to the tune of several trillion dollars annually worldwide. But there are applications for fossil fuels for which there currently are no practical alternatives such as jet fuel, so saying they wouldn't be competitive requires some clarification about the circumstances. Furthermore there are use cases where fossil fuels are and will remain the most practical and economic source of power for the foreseeable future even if you suddenly were to burden them with the full cost of the pollution they cause.
Don't get me wrong, I think fossil fuels present a real and present danger but the goal should be to minimize their use since getting rid of them completely isn't going to happen.
Shocking!
At least when the wind blows...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Tinkerbell said, "Let my people go!"
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
It's great that the human race made such strides in communication as the internet to be overtaken by people like you. You're really a testament to everything humans have worked to produce over the past few thousand years.