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

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

#171

Post by 666lumberjack »

_8j50 wrote: 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…

The cynic in me thinks the reason fossil energy companies are keen to invest in wind and solar is that they don't believe it can operate independently of natural gas backup any time in the near future and they want to secure some baseline level of demand going forward by ensuring it wins out over nuclear (fission or fusion), advanced geothermal or any other promising low-carbon generation option that doesn't have intermittency issues.

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

#172

Post by sien »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #169
sien wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which countries are getting renewables right and have lower power costs than, say, France with similarly low electricity prices? Also that don't rely on hydropower. That's something limited by geography. Also, the paper was from the OECD NEA, nothing to do with Shellenberger.

The Forbes link is Shellenberger, it's even in the URL. I'm not going to plough through a 224 page joint Nuclear Energy Agency / OECD study, with 8 page densely packed conclusion. I don't trust Shellenberger to distil anything honestly - he has way too much form.

Seriously, what is the country or countries that are doing renewables well and cheaply?

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

#173

Post by todd8 »

hadlock wrote: post #141
hirundo wrote: 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 durin…

> 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.

If the blades turn slowly, too much wind passes through the gaps between the blades without interacting with the turbine. Although modern turbines may appear to be turning leisurely, because of their scale the blades are traveling large distances on each revolution resulting in high impact speed. The latest land based turbines being made by GE have a rotor circumference of 0.3 miles[1].

Modern turbine blades reach speeds of 180 miles per hour at their tips.[2,3] The blades of new turbines travel so fast that erosion of the blades is a serious problem.

[1] https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/onshore-wind/...

[2] http://www.acua.com/uploadedFiles/Site/About_Us/WindFarm.pdf

[3] https://gizmodo.com/the-worlds-biggest-wind-turbine-blades-a...

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

#174

Post by 9dl »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #162
9dl wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany vs France Full research http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf Short https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/05... Nuclear safer, cheaper (in short and long term) and produce less carbon emission

Michael Shellenberger, founder of pro-nuclear lobbying outfit Environmental Progress. He is so pro nuclear and anti renewables that he simply makes stuff up in order to show $50 is less than $5. Oh look, he's branded the graphs with his lobbying outfit logo. Why is he not comparing with other countries that are getting it right? Ah because the conclusion was determined before he wrote a single word. He was drasticall…

It is ok with disclosing conflict of interests and manipulations

But you should provide some papers which support your position

If we want civil discussion

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

#175

Post by ocschwar »

9dl wrote: post #154
ocschwar wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the Lazard estimate of levelized cost of energy, spending the same money on nuclear fission would produce one third of the power.

Germany vs France Full research http://www.oecd-nea.org/ndd/pubs/2019/7299-system-costs.pdf Short https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/05... Nuclear safer, cheaper (in short and long term) and produce less carbon emission

Worldwide, by the most respected outfit in this field:

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019

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

#176

Post by hodgesrm »

666lumberjack wrote: post #171
_8j50 wrote: 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…

The cynic in me thinks the reason fossil energy companies are keen to invest in wind and solar is that they don't believe it can operate independently of natural gas backup any time in the near future and they want to secure some baseline level of demand going forward by ensuring it wins out over nuclear (fission or fusion), advanced geothermal or any other promising low-carbon generation option that doesn't have int…

Another reading is that those companies are in the energy business and at some level don't really care how it's generated as long as it's utility scale and has sufficiently low cost that they can make money. After all you still need distribution networks, load management, marketing, sales, administration, etc. regardless of where energy comes from. That's what energy companies provide.

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

#177

Post by jerven »

Rebelgecko wrote: post #125
josefresco wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I see these things failing all the time around me You do? Where?

I see dead ones at the San Gorgonio wind farm all the time. I imagine the maintenance situation is even worse for offshore installations.

Are they dead/broken or market optimizing power delivery?

Spinning a few down to nothing can be better for a farm total life time efficiency. You might make more money curtailing output because it is easy to turn off a wind turbine, compared to reacting with an inflexible baseload plant.

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

#178

Post by NeedMoreTea »

sien wrote: post #172
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Forbes link is Shellenberger, it's even in the URL. I'm not going to plough through a 224 page joint Nuclear Energy Agency / OECD study, with 8 page densely packed conclusion. I don't trust Shellenberger to distil anything honestly - he has way too much form.

Seriously, what is the country or countries that are doing renewables well and cheaply?

Without any awareness of relative pricing I'd have liked to see comparisons with nations who haven't had the well reported issues Germany has had, with negative prices and what seems a huge proportion of solar given their latitude - along with recent increases of using lignite.

The "obvious" choices would seem to be Sweden, Iceland, Morocco, Denmark and UK. Perhaps China, or even Costa Rica who seem to have the world's most ambitious target - carbon free by 2021. I'm sure there's others progressing quickly.

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

#179

Post by account73466 »

kaybe wrote: post #156
account73466 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the links! The "green ... greeen!" guys just downvoted me to hell.

The papers all stress that wind farms are considerably better than fossil fuels no matter what, so 'accelerate' is maybe not the best way to put it. I propose 'influence'. However, the consequences from each technology should still be debatable, and are an interesting question in itself I think. The problems start when questions become political - what are the implications? In the hard sciences we usually don't conce…

>> I think your post fell victim to that.

My post raised a question and wasn't based on the papers you mentioned but based on what I was told by wind farm engineers (e.g., that many farms are not green positive when accounting for everything even when accounting for futures years of exploitation). After working in academia for years, I believe that there is a much higher likelihood of a paper being rejected if it shows that large wind farms harm local environment. It is basically $1T of interests and "green-greeen!" people against people who will figure out what happens only years later.

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

#180

Post by NeedMoreTea »

_8j50 wrote: post #166
NeedMoreTea wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Thank you, first time learnig about eddy currents. Maybe the mobility of sea based turbines makes them a bit more attractive if they can move around to position themselves for maximum efficiency?

It's a similar effect to wake turbulence from large jets - invisible without added cloud or smoke, but can have a dramatic effect, so they space landings out well.

The offshore turbines I know of are in relatively shallow water, and fixed construction on the sea bed. Not sure if deep water turbines could move around, but I imagine the processing needed to calculate would be immense - fluid dynamics is pretty complex!

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