This article originally published at Clean Technica. View the original post here. The United Kingdom celebrated the installation of its first 6 MW wind turbine over the weekend, having erected the first of 35 Siemens 6 MW turbines at the … Continue reading UK Installs First 6 MW Wind Turbine In North Sea
Originally posted at Climate Progress. View the original post here.
The British government has approved what could become the world’s largest offshore wind farm, a 1,200-megawatt endeavor that is slated to begin producing energy by 2019.
On Tuesday, the U.K.’s Department for Energy & Climate Change, a government body that’sresponsible for getting the U.K. to meet a goal of getting at least 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, gave the OK to ScottishPower Renewables and Swedish utility Vattenfall to build their East Anglia One offshore wind farm. Right now, the plan is to build up to 240 offshore wind turbines which together will generate 1,200 megawatts of power — making this project larger than the 630 megawatt London Array offshore wind farm, currently the largest offshore farm in the world. The companies estimate that the farm will have the potential to power 820,000 households. Continue reading “U.K. Approves Plans For What Could Become The World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm”
Published by The Climate Group. View original article.
LONDON: The European renewable energy market received a significant boost with the announcement that the world’s largest wind farm will be built off the coast of the Netherlands.
When fully operational, the 600MW Gemini offshore wind farm will be able to meet the power needs of 1.5 million people, while cutting carbon dioxide by 1,250,000 tons. The project will also be crucial for reaching the Netherlands’ 14% renewable energy target by 2020. Continue reading “WORLD’S LARGEST WIND FARM TO BE BUILT OFF DUTCH COAST”
Source: Utility-Scale Land-Based 80-Meter Wind Maps Original article posted by Mike Barnard in the Energy and Policy Institute website on 4th April 2014. Wind energy is a rapidly growing and profitable business worldwide, usually at the expense of fossil fuel generation revenue … Continue reading Wind Energy: A Mature Business Challenging Fossil Generation Profits
Published by Bloomberg. View original article.
Operators of a wind farm in waters off Fukushima prefecture, site of the March 2011 nuclear disaster, aim to cut the cost of setting up the floating turbines by half as they push to commercialize the technology.
The pilot project, funded by the government and led by trading house Marubeni Corp. (8002), began operations on Nov. 11 with a 2-megawatt turbine connected to a substation. Both are about 20 kilometers (12 miles) off the coast of Fukushima. The project’s second phase will see the installation of two more turbines from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. (7011) with 7 megawatts capacity each.
“The most important thing for the first phase was to float the turbine and make it work, rather than the cost,” Tomofumi Fukuda, a Marubeni official, said earlier this month in Fukushima after a ceremony to mark the start of operations. “For the second phase, it will become very important to figure out how to reduce costs to commercialize the technology.”
The effort off Fukushima is part of a broader push by Japan to diversify its sources of energy after the nuclear disaster in 2011 and the subsequent idling of the nation’s fleet of atomic power stations for safety checks. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Cabinet has set a target of making floating offshore wind technology viable by 2018.
Manufacturing and installing the 2-megawatt wind power generation system, which is able to generate power for about 1,700 homes, cost slightly more than 2 million yen ($20,000) per kilowatt, Fukuda said. Operators want to reduce that to 1 million yen per kilowatt by the second phase when the next two turbines are installed, he said.
Continue reading “Fukushima Floating Offshore Wind Project Seeks to Halve Cost”
Published by the American Wind Energy Association. View original article.
New research released by an independent grid operator confirms that wind energy is drastically decreasing both the price of electricity and emissions of harmful pollutants. The study was led by PJM, the independent grid operator for all or parts of 13 Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes states (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia) and DC. The results are posted here.
Highlights of the study:
– Wind energy produces massive reductions in electricity production costs and wholesale prices. Obtaining 20% of PJM’s electricity from wind energy reduces the cost of producing electricity by $9 billion annually (about 25% of overall production costs of $37 billion), while 30% wind reduces production costs by $13 billion (about 35%) each year. Wholesale electricity prices are reduced by $9-21 billion annually across the 20% and 30% scenarios, with the high offshore scenarios producing the largest wholesale price reductions of $21 billion. This occurs because offshore wind tends to produce more during times of peak electricity demand, offsetting more expensive gas generation. Continue reading “Independent grid operator study confirms wind power’s economic, environmental value”
Published by Wind Power Monthly. View original article.
WORLDWIDE: Denmark’s first offshore wind farm, at Vindeby, has now accumulated over 20 years of operation and generated 217TWh of electricity. Tunø Knob, the second offshore wind farm, is not far behind, having been generating since 1995.
An article in the autumn 2010 issue of WindStats looked at the performance of these — as well as some Swedish and British — wind farms, and found that their outputs were generally in line with expectations. However, a recent analysis by the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) in the UK has suggested that the productivity of the Danish offshore wind farms has been declining significantly with age and also concludes that “few wind farms will operate for more than 12-15 years”.
This analysis therefore updates the earlier WindStats review and examines the basis for the claim that wind-turbine performance declines with age. An analysis of data from the Danish Energy Agency finds no evidence to support the claim of an age-related performance drop. Performance generally appears to be maintained at a consistent level, with only a slight decline with age — one in line with other types of power plants. Some turbines even delivered improved performance with increasing age.
Continue reading “No big drop in performance as turbines get older”
Published by Wind Power Monthly. View original article.
WORLDWIDE: A new report comparing generation costs for different technologies on a global basis confirms wind’s competitiveness.
In its Renewable Energy Medium-Term Market Report 2013, the International Energy Agency (IEA) compares all electricity-generating technologies and suggests that the minimum global price for onshore wind is about $50/MWh, which can only be bettered by geothermal and hydro in favourable locations, and coal and gas in some locations with cheap access. The IEA suggests the generation cost range for onshore wind is $50-160/MWh, with offshore wind at $150-340/MWh. Coal is placed at $40-90/MWh and gas at $40-130/MWh. This confirms once again that the cheapest wind can now compete with both gas and coal. Continue reading “Wind Economics: Case for wind energy strengthens further”
Published by Barnard on Wind. View the original article.
A common refrain by people who question wind power as an effective part of energy grids is that it doesn’t produce the same amount of power all of the time.
Short Answer
Wind turbines are cost effective forms of generation achieving 35%-47% capacity factors today that take into account the variability of the wind in specific sites along with their efficiency. This is factored into the business cases for new generation. New turbines aimed at specific wind conditions are much more efficient at capturing the wind than older wind turbines. As all forms of generation are more or less intermittent, this is just another form of energy to forecast, plan for and manage on a day-to-day basis and poses no particularly great challenges.
Long Answer
There are several related misunderstandings packed into these statements: Continue reading “The wind doesn’t blow all the time. Why doesn’t this make wind power ineffective?”
Offshore windfarms are not generally considered economical in Australia because we have such a large (cheaper) onshore wind resource here: good winds over a large land area. We do have offshore oil and gas drilling in Australia – including exploration in areas three times the depth of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, in the Great Australian Bight. The following shows Shell arguing against wind farms and asking for government support for its oil and gas activities. The most glaring omission from this article, however, isn’t the risk of further Deepwater Horizons but the fact that oil and gas are driving dangerous … Continue reading Offshore wind or offshore oil and gas?
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