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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.
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.
There's probably no A/Cs in Scotland... and who knows maybe they don't use electricity for heating either. Oh, and it's the EU so energy saving light-bulbs are mandatory.
There are quite a few brilliant heating systems around the world that use excess heating from electricity production, or waste incinerators... When heating is supplied to your house through a hot water pipe it's possible to get a very impressive efficiency.
Heating water and installing hot water pipes is boring technology, but well proven and probably one of the more cost efficient ways to reduce greenhouse emissions. Even if the heating origins from burning stuff.
Homes in the UK mostly use natural gas for heating.
The UK's average household electricity consumption is slightly below the EU average - which, in turn, is less than half of the US average.
Trolling much?
Firstly, it's not Scotland's use that is important, since the UK has a grid that covers Scotland, England and Wales.
Secondly, and I don't know if this is a good or bad measure, but households in the UK use more electricity per household than in many other European countries. Of course the number is much lower than in the USA, which is profligate in its domestic electricity use.
Note that many people use electricity for heating. They use storage heaters, which store heat when electricity is cheap (at night) and release it during the day.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
Whatâ(TM)s wrong with the summary?
#DeleteFacebook
Salt water and electrical stuff tend to not mix, so how do they send (high voltage?) power - Must be some impressive insulation.
Thanks for dropping by, genius. Electricity has been transmitted underwater for 100 years; offshore wind turbines have been around for 1/4 century. It's all transmitted by pixies.
Here's a photo of the cross-section of a similar cable. It's pretty impressive.
The above cable contains 3 wires, each 500mm^2 in cross section. It's rated at 245kV, but I think it runs at 230kV, meaning it can carry 860A at full capacity.
dom
They use cables. You should look them up, it'll blow your mind.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Heating water and installing hot water pipes is boring technology...
Especially in Iceland. When you need hot water, you just drill for it.
Meanwhile, I wouldn't even want to imagine what an âoebucketâ is. Sounds formidable.