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US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

arstechnica.com

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Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#321

Post by mlinhares »

piva00 wrote: post #243
vablings wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have seen what Boeing has become when it's effectively unregulated. I think this is vastly overstated by the media. Boeing is still heavily regulated and has a pretty good safety record compared 20 or 30 years prior. The biggest disaster of recent times (MCAS) was because of the tight regulations around type certification and trying to avoid costs to carriers > Some things need to be regulated, esp. if mistakes…

> The biggest disaster of recent times (MCAS) was because of the tight regulations around type certification and trying to avoid costs to carriers Meaning they tried to skirt around the regulations, including regulatory capture by pushing self-certification because competition caught up to them while they spent money on buybacks instead of investing in R&D, perhaps even investing in absorbing some costs of certificat…

Its also bullshit to say the EU has less regulation on developing planes than the US. Boing was just incompetent and mismanaged because of decades of government handouts keeping the business going and MBA wielding idiots cutting costs at every corner.

It became a private equity managed business without ever being bought by private equity.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#322

Post by archi42 »

MandieD wrote: post #169
KaiserPro wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true, but if you already have a battery, getting an extra 200-400w when the sun isn't shining is really useful. (for a UK based house. Not so sure about the USA.) The cost isn't as good as solar though. a 1kw turbine is expensive.

Wow, that would take care of our usual home office base load (Germany, not using electricity for heating)

It's a siren call for us techies, but reality is less pretty than our fantasies of "cheap base load".

I got an offer for a "essentially free" residential turbine including the pylon (8 to 10 meters, the legal limit for a "Kleinwindanlage") in SW Germany - just had to dismantle it and put it on my lawn. And of course pour a huge foundation [2x2m?] and have an accredited electrician do the necessary alterations. Nope. It didn't even produce enough electricity to offset the maintenance costs - no idea how I should offset the costs for moving it, even with the free capex.

And I did the math about 3 years ago: Prices for both PV and batteries dropped a lot since then. For late fall/early spring I would be better off by adding a PV carport (2 cars). I could also finally automate charging my batteries while electricity is cheap during Dec/Jan, might even be worth bumping my existing battery from 28 kWh to 42 kWh.

To be fair: The math might work out in the Northern Germany; but I would not bet on it.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#323

Post by belorn »

laurencerowe wrote: post #259
fasterik wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't disagree that there is price parity for the levelized cost. There is still not price parity for levelized full system cost. If we used wind and solar for 95-100% of generation, the price would be much higher. My point is not that we can or should replace wind and solar with nuclear. It's that it is far cheaper to use a combination of nuclear, wind, and solar than it is to use 100% wind and solar.

I think it’s quite conceivable that nuclear would be cheaper for a 100% carbon free grid. But I don’t understand how the combination of nuclear, wind and solar would be low cost. Wouldn’t you effectively have to build out enough nuclear to cover still cloudy days at which point your wind and solar is not very useful? That sounds expensive. I suspect we won’t end up building much nuclear because we will already have b…

Green hydrogen is prohibitively expensive and are still way more expensive than using fossil fuels to create hydrogen (called black hydrogen). Burning green hydrogen for electricity when we have yet to make green steel economical viable is not a good idea. Nuclear is still a magnitude cheaper than that.

Green hydrogen has to first prove itself that it can become economical viable. One of the biggest test trials for that is the Swedish initiative, and that one is mostly paid through subsidies and grants. Sadly it isn't looking very great even if the government did decide to continue sending more billions into the project.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#324

Post by the_gipsy »

dmbche wrote: post #293
alhirzel wrote: post #279

Years ago, this very subject was an interview question at a national lab (at an undergrad level). The question was roughly: > the ends of windmill blades look a lot like a jet on radar. If you were assigned to this project, what would your approach be to avoiding false positives? This was in 2011/2012. I find it difficult to believe the problem is not solved.

Realistically, isn't it a known presence on radar? It's static - you can't just ignore signals from that area in space?

The enemy could be hiding precisely at the windmills /s

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#325

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

jeltz wrote: post #286
Retric wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear is inherently expensive even with zero regulations you have the full costs of a coal power plant + more expensive lifetime costs for fuel + extra costs associated with nuclear such as more and more highly educated workers. Meanwhile coal is dead because it’s already more expensive than the market is willing to accept. The only hope for nuclear is massive subsidies, deregulation on its own isn’t going to work.

How come Sweden as cheap nuclear power? The main reason electricity is kinda expensive in Sweden is because the EU forces is to export our cheap nuclear energy to Denmark and Germany.

Paid off nuclear plants produce quite cheap electricity. The problem is that it takes 10-15 years of building and then 40 years of paying $180-220/MWh to get a paid off nuclear plant as per modern western construction costs.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#326

Post by derriz »

aidenn0 wrote: post #266
derriz wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly wind turbines don’t really scale down like PV panels. The energy produced by PV panels is a linear function of their surface area. For wind turbines, it scales with the square of the blade length.

Doesn't the area described by a turbine's motion scale with the square of the blade-length, so given a circular area covered by a turbine, the power will scale linearly with that area?

Yes but you’re not paying for the area the blade covers - you’re paying for the blade. Simplifying (to an extreme) for the sake of illustration - a 20m blade costs twice as much as a 10m one but produces 4 times the energy.

Obviously, cost scales more than linearly with blade length but it’s a bit like big O - the n^2 factor dominates. This is why wind turbines have been getting bigger and bigger. And why the cost of domestic or small-scale wind turbines remains stubbornly high despite the dramatic fall in the average cost per MW seen for wind turbines - as the falls are largely driven by the ability to manufacture larger and larger turbine blades. While falls in costs for solar PV can be seen at every scale.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#327

Post by iszomer »

tagawa wrote: post #249
pheggs wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are at least two reasons trump is pushing for oil: 1) the US has lots of oil reserves, which would lose lots of value if everybody was using renewables 2) oil is the main driver for dollar demand, as oil is paid in dollar, allowing the US to have lots of debt relatively cheaply That's also the reason why he wants to tell Europe to stop using renewables, and that's the reason why he is threatening Venezuela - be…

Maybe a third reason: “Last week, Trump Media, the parent company of Truth Social that is majority-owned by the president, said it was getting into the energy business, announcing a merger with a fusion firm TAE Technologies.” Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd74lyr094vo

Coincidentally, TAE Technologies had a product placement baked into the 2021 film named Finch with Tom Hanks, distributed by Apple Original Films.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#328

Post by senectus1 »

aqme28 wrote: post #233
pheggs wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are at least two reasons trump is pushing for oil: 1) the US has lots of oil reserves, which would lose lots of value if everybody was using renewables 2) oil is the main driver for dollar demand, as oil is paid in dollar, allowing the US to have lots of debt relatively cheaply That's also the reason why he wants to tell Europe to stop using renewables, and that's the reason why he is threatening Venezuela - be…

There is a third important reason-- For some reason, oil has masculine aesthetics but wind power doesn't. I don't think this is a calculated play

The Aplha Male Energy didnt do so well over the weekend. One got its jaw broken in two places... the other just got pounded into submission.

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#329

Post by tjohns »

dmbche wrote: post #293
alhirzel wrote: post #279

Years ago, this very subject was an interview question at a national lab (at an undergrad level). The question was roughly: > the ends of windmill blades look a lot like a jet on radar. If you were assigned to this project, what would your approach be to avoiding false positives? This was in 2011/2012. I find it difficult to believe the problem is not solved.

Realistically, isn't it a known presence on radar? It's static - you can't just ignore signals from that area in space?

Yes, and more...

You can use different antenna designs for a more directional radar beam. Or tilt the beam upwards to steer it around obstacles.

You can also build a moving-target detector by looking at doppler shift to filter out objects that are moving too slowly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_target_indication

Re: US blocks all offshore wind construction, says reason is classified

#330

Post by softwaredoug »

The real takeaway is when a big project can be paused entirely due to one presidents very specific / frivolous whims - we won’t be able to do big projects in the current order. We need a shift in the constitutional order where the whims of one person isnt fused with the bureaucracy
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