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Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

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141–150 of 182 posts

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#141
post #22

How many birds is it worth sacrificing to build huge wind turbine farms instead of compact nuclear reactors? Is the worst case of a Chernobyl or Fukushima worse than the expected case from square miles of spinning blades?

I looked into this in depth once.

Basically if you look at the very early wind turbines in northern california, which the number comes from originally, these turbines had blades about 20 feet long, and spun very, very fast to produce any kind of power. Almost like a slow blender. Blades would rotate once per second of faster. They were very obviously dangerous even to the casual observer.

This was 20+ years ago during the infancy of the industry.

This is in contrast to all modern turbines, those built after ~2005, which is to say, well over 99%, it can take over 15 seconds for a blade to sweep through one revolution. Getting hit by one of these blades is unfortunate, but causes significantly less damage.

Comparing a Gen 1 "blender turbine" and a Gen 2 modern "sweeper turbine" is almost criminal when doing bird impact studies.

Finally the state of california quietly disabled the blender turbines as they were both very expensive to maintain being first gen technology and more importantly they were generating the bulk of bird strike fatalities and grossly inflating the number of bird fatality numbers for the global industry. The replacement of these ~20 blender turbines was 3 sweeper turbines and you'll note since the decommissioning of the last of the blender turbines, bird strikes for turbines fell off a cliff.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#142
post #139
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is spending money on a sure thing, in the face of a global emergency with a ticking clock, "nuts", relative to wasting a decade and a trillion dollars on fantasy tech that may or may not work at all?

The problem is that it is more likely 50y than a decade, the time to build multiple generations of expensive experimental reactors and prototypes.

Yep. Watch what capital does, and don't make excuses about "regulations" or "politics". The capital is flowing into wind/solar, because the capital smells money.

People fall in love with the idea of nuclear power. They get offended that it may not be the savior after all.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that said, if you go offshore, you don't really need a lot of storage. How does that work?

Because the wind is more steady, around the clock and over longer periods of time.

Data? From what I've seen it's a little bit steadier, but not that much.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#144
post #90

Oil and gas ("energy") companies are investing a lot into wind energy. They know they have to adopt. In the end they just want profits and they have the capital to make the right investments. I really wish the environmentalist movement saw them as just another money hungry corporation instead some evil villain out to destroy the planet. They would love to diversify their revenue stream, now is a good time to work wit…

> why don't wind turbines have more than one "wheel"

Which I take to mean more than one set of blades? In which case it's because they interfere with each other, and reduce the power generation possible in all surrounding turbines. Wind farms come with a minimum separation that is something like 5 or 10 blade diameters spacing, depending on prevailing winds. That spacing gives every turbine clear air free of induced eddy currents.

This is also why scaled down rooftop and urban wind generation doesn't really work - there are too many eddy currents such that generation becomes very intermittent.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#145
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A common argument; Michael Schellenberger addresses it here: https://www.ted.com/talks/michael_shellenberger_why_renewabl... Basically, cats kills sparrows and other small and extremely prolific urban birds. Those birds aren't what wind turbines threaten. Wind turbines threaten larger prey birds like owls, eagles, falcons, etc.

How many owls and eagles are anywhere near offshore wind turbines?

Zero

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#146
post #133
post #58

This is nuts. I wonder what the effect of spending $1T on nuclear would be in comparison. I bet it's enough money to get to practical nuclear fusion in a decade, which would largely obviate the need in most other energy generation methods.

I am watching right now a conference [1] on youtube precisely on the comparison of hypothetical 100% wind vs 100% nuclear. Basically it explains that wind has a typical average utilisation of about 20% vs 70% for full nuclear. A turbine lasts about 20-30y vs 60 for a nuclear reactor. In addition, wind is producing the electricity at the edge of the network, and you loose the diversification effect of having a network…

Another thing that isn’t lasting so well with wind turbines apparently are the blades. Their leading edges get seriously chewed up by tiny particles in the air (salt, dust, etc).

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#147
post #117
post #58

This is nuts. I wonder what the effect of spending $1T on nuclear would be in comparison. I bet it's enough money to get to practical nuclear fusion in a decade, which would largely obviate the need in most other energy generation methods.

Why is spending money on a sure thing, in the face of a global emergency with a ticking clock, "nuts", relative to wasting a decade and a trillion dollars on fantasy tech that may or may not work at all?

Nuclear fission would obviously be the sure thing. (As opposed to fusion.)

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#148
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are wind and solar cost-competitive when they can exist in Germany only with extreme high subsidies? Look at the new windfarm called "Wikinger" that Germany built near the island of Ruegen: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offshore-Windpark_Wikinger Cost: 1.4 billion Euros Lifetime: 20 years Power: 350 MW Max. capacity: 0.4 (40%) Price at the electricity stock exchange Leipzig: 36 Euro/MWh Thus: 350 0.4 24 365 20*36…

> Lifetime: 20 years Power Is that really the lifetime of the farm, or is it just when turbines need to be replaced?

What’s the difference

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#149
post #27

So disappointing journalists never understand the difference between power and energy. The opening sentences make me cringe so much I don't even want to read the rest of the article > Last month the American wind industry hit a major milestone — 100 gigawatts of total installed capacity. That's enough electricity to power the state of California and New Jersey combined for one year.

I agree. I can see it now, headline:

"Massive scientific breakthrough -- 100 trillion Watts of power, enough to power all the US, from just a single AAA cell flashlight battery!!!"

Sure, but the headline omitted that the power lasts for only 10^(-100) seconds or so!

In the news business, energy and power are nearly synonymous. E.g., from sports writing we might get something like:

"On Sunday Quarterback Joe Testosteroni with his massive energy and power will come with his game face on, ready to play, and win if he possibly can."

So such sports writing is in the formula fiction pattern of the high drama of a desperate clash of titans.

Be careful: Some people writing that stuff get paid more than some readers of Hacker News!

In my life, it took me some years to accept that quite broadly the news business forgot nearly all their freshman physics! They are a lot better at some of the patterns of formula fiction. We can guess they liked literature class better than physics class. They can be really good at creating smelly bait for the ad hook.

Re: Offshore wind will be a $1T industry by 2040, but it's needed now

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lifetime: 20 years Power Is that really the lifetime of the farm, or is it just when turbines need to be replaced?

What’s the difference

The platforms, towers and undersea cables are already paid for. Replacing one piece of the system isn't starting over. The math presented was of all return on investment ending at 20 years.
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