New from Vestas, the company that gives you roto-splode:
…comes this super gnarly giant sea wind turbine. No, not an April fools post.
Here’s the details from Vestas:
A dedicated offshore turbine – specifically designed for the roughest North Sea conditions.
Lowering the cost of energy in relation to offshore wind is essential for the industry. Some of the major stepping stones in achieving this are size and subsequent increased energy capture, which means a need for much bigger turbines that are specifically designed for the challenging offshore environment.
With the introduction of the V164-7.0 MW Vestas is taking a major step towards meeting these needs.
CEO Ditlev Engel says of the new turbine: “We are very pleased to be able to serve the market and show our commitment to the offshore wind industry by introducing our dedicated offshore turbine – the V164-7.0 MW. Seeing the positive indications from governments worldwide, and especially from the UK, to increase the utilisation of wind energy is indeed very promising. We look forward to this new turbine doing its part in making these political targets a reality.”
According to Anders Søe-Jensen, President of Vestas Offshore, the offshore wind market is set to really take off over the coming years, but more so in some parts of the world than in others: “We expect the major part of offshore wind development to happen in the Northern part of Europe, where the conditions at sea are particularly rough. Based on our broad true offshore experience and our many years as pioneers within the offshore wind industry, we have specifically designed the V164-7.0 MW to provide the highest energy capture and the highest reliability in this rough and challenging environment. This makes our new turbine an obvious and ideal choice for instance for many UK Round 3 projects.”
Based on the potential market size, the V164-7.0 MW business case is based on Europe and primarily the Northern European markets. Should market demand require so, Vestas is however also prepared to take the V164-7.0 MW to other parts of the world in due time.
Combining innovation and proven technology to ensure reliability
Having pioneered the offshore wind industry, Vestas has over the years gained extensive experience and knowledge which we continuously use actively in our research and development activities. Vestas works intensively to ensure that lessons learned are combined with new and innovative solutions to eventually provide the highest possible business case certainty for our customers. This newest addition to our offshore product portfolio is no exception.
The innovative part of the new turbine is, along with a wide range of technical features, its size and consequently much increased energy capture whereas the proven technology is represented by, among other things, the medium-speed drive-train solution.
“We actually kept all options open from the start, running two separate parallel R&D development tracks; One focusing on direct drive and one on a geared solution. It soon became clear that if we wanted to meet the customers’ expectations about lowest possible cost of energy and high business case certainty we needed a perfect combination of innovation and proven technology and so the choice could only be to go for a medium-speed drive-train solution,” says Finn Strøm Madsen, President of Vestas Technology R&D on this particular design choice and concludes: “Offshore wind customers do not want new and untested solutions. They want reliability and business case certainty – and that is what the V164-7.0 MW gives them.”
To ensure alignment between customer needs and the features of the next generation offshore turbine, a number of experienced offshore customers have been invited to provide their input during the development process – resulting in a match between turbine specifics and customer business cases.
Paving the way for the next generation offshore turbine
Construction of the first V164-7.0 MW prototypes is expected in Q4 2012. Serial production is set to begin in Q1 2015 provided a firm order backlog is in place to justify the substantial investment needed to pave the way for the V164-7.0 MW.
About Vestas Offshore
Vestas has been a pioneer within offshore wind since the birth of the industry and has installed 580 offshore turbines equalling 43 per cent of all offshore turbines in the world. In 2010 alone, Vestas installed a total of 555 MW at the Robin Rigg, Thanet and Bligh Bank offshore wind farms and the overall number of installed capacity has now surpassed 1,400 MW.
In the UK alone, Vestas employs more than 550 people.
Slides from today’s press conference can be found here
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From their press conference slide show (link above), this thing is HUGE:
I had to laugh though, when I looked at this slide:
They forgot the most important element of the 7 megawatt triad:, “wind”.
Jim;
He was specific about the deflection of resources into low-output high cost windmills. Which did perform during the night’s storm at their usual best 30% of nameplate, but were useless the next day during the daylight recovery, when most needed.
mikelorrey;
ALL dispersed low-intensity energy sources (yes, that includes ocean currents) require massive real-estate and capital commitment. Unanticipated Costs and Unintended Consequences quickly make them deadweight when attempted on much above the small niche scale.
Long-distance and complex connection and transmission infrastructure from widely distributed and remote locations are not least of the “unseen” that overwhelms the “seen” (apparent and/or promoted) benefits. As for maintenance: undersea generators and high-voltage transmission lines? RU serious?
Moron solutions.
Small wind mills don’t make the rated power output.
Let’s make them bigger…
I think i’d rather live next to a nuke.
Here is some numbers that convert Wind Power into Barrels of oil.
First, convert 1 bbl of oil (BOE) into MWhr.
Oil = 44 MJ/kg = 44 GJ / toe (ton equivalent)
1 toe = 7.11 BOE
0.28 MWhr = 1 GJ
So Oil = 1.73 MWhr/BOE.
Take your average 1.5 MW Windmill on in the Sweetwater Wind Farm.
1.5 MW Windmill * 24 hr/day * 30% capacity factor (% of time wind blows to generate 1.5 MW)
1.5 MW Windmill = 6.2 BOE/Day.
Think of each wind turbine as a stripper well.
so, lets take the subject 7 MW Windmill * 24 hr/day * 40% capacity factor
= 39 BOE/day for each 500′ offshore windmill.
How does that compare to offshore oil production?
Brent Oil Field, discovered 35 years ago, still produces 20,000 BO/day + 3 MMCF/day. So over 500 windmills will be needed to replace Brent, which supplies 2% of UK’s needs.
Lets go to a more recent platform: Thunderhorse, deep water Gulf of Mexico.
one platform 150 miles from shore, rated for 250,000 BOE/day production
equivalent to over 6400 seven-MW windmills that have to be
built in Coastal shallow water and survive Cat 5 hurricanes
How much area would have to be forested with these windmills?
One number I heard was square the height * 10 to avoid interferring turbulance.
(500 feet high)^2*10/43560(sqft/acre) = 57 acres/turbine
57 (acres/turbine) *6400 turbines/640(acre/sqmi)
= 570 Square miles to replace 250,000 BO/day from 1 platform.
It is 250 miles from New Orleans to Destin, FL.
You need 26 turbines for each mile of coastline in a swath 2 miles deep, horizon to horizon.
I’m no ‘fan’ of wind turbines, but I was shocked at how poor the numbers were.
http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html
That will give lots of birds for the fish to eat!
Iowa, Mn, the Dakotas seem to be tickled to death with their considerable wind generation. California is now getting 19% of its electricity from non-hydro, non-nuclear renewables (the lowest cost utility in LA is also the one that utilizes the most renewables.
When the coal and nat gas plants in Texas “froze up” the turbines just kept on twirling. When the Japanes Nuke blew, their wind turbines just kept on putting out gigawatts.
When the present coal mines in the Powder River Basin are pretty much played-out in 2030 California’s Wind, and Solar plants will be paid-off, and, presumably, happily putting out multitudes of millions of watts of power.
The 20th Century is past history, time to move on.
Ocean based wind turbines are a simple business case.
Take the all up cost to manufacture, install and commission.
Take the market value of the anual average electrcity output.
Subtract the annual average cost of operation, maintenance and end of life dismantling.
Submit it all to a discount cash flow analysis, at a suitably high discount rate to allow for all known-knowns, known-unknowns and unknown-unknowns, including length of effective economic life and changes in future governmental policies, tax rates and subsidies.
If it’s a goer, then go!
If not, don’t go.
All energy is clean, whether washed by the oceans or not.
It gets rather cold in the North Sea. Didn’t wind mills that are meant to provide power for England freeze up this past December? Who would want to climb up a monstrosity like this to squirt WD-40 in its armpits. I think the Brits had to import nuclear energy from France when the mills failed.
I wonder if such monstrosities could do harm to sea life or affect cloud formations and other weather.
I say give it a whirl anyway.
It appears from their website that most all of Vestas recent orders are for the 2MW size. Could not find much detail on their products. Maybe 2MW is all they have.
Stephen Rasey gets it!
It’s about energy per unit of surface area.
Wind, solar, hydro, coal…..none hold a candle to oil & gas for environmental conservation.
Personally, I would want to be assured of an extremely hight discount factor to compensate for all the unknowables involved, before risking my hard won retirement savings into untested new technology, like wind farms planted in the open ocean.
But that’s just my viewpoint.
When capital is gone, it’s, well, gone!
Totally renewable energy was commonplace within living memory.
My grandmother told me how, back in the 1910’s and 1920’s, the only electricity they had was a generator attached to the windmill used to pump water for the cattle on their farm.
The wind generator made just enough current to power their radio. This was their main source of entertainment: after sunset, after supper, they would retire to the living room and listen to the radio for an hour or two before bed-time.
All other energy use was totally renewable and harvested locally. They cooked on a wood-fired Franklin stove. They plowed with mules, and used the mules to crush the sorghum to make molasses. My mother remembers picking the cotton crop by hand. They pumped their water up from a well in the back yard by hand and carried it into the house in buckets. The ice man came twice a week to replenish the big block of ice in the icebox.
It was a hardscrabble life, hot in the summer, cold in the winter. My aunt remembered, to her dying day, my grandmother’s anxiety each night at supper time, worrying about how to find enough food to feed a family of eight.
This is what wind power will take us back to: the energy poverty of the early 20th Century.
I for one am not enthusiastic about the process.
Kum Dollison, you wrote in part “the lowest cost utility in LA is also the one that utilizes the most renewables”.
I would like to see the audited figures to back up your claim.
For long term viability they need to be lowest cost witout government subsidy and without penalties, taxes and restrcitions handicapping their opposition.
If wind is most economic then I’m all for it.
In Australia wind is proving to be the most uneconomic and the most unreliable.
Kum Dollison says:
April 1, 2011 at 9:44 pm
When the Japanes Nuke blew, their wind turbines just kept on putting out gigawatts.
If the Japanese coast had been lined with beauties what do you suppose the result would have been?
oops! ” these beauties”
@Kum
You are right. Time to move on and give up the wind power subsidies.
It would have to be made of non-ferrous alloy, meaning Chromium/Nickel. An order of magnitude more costly than stainless steel, yet more brittle. Uh-oh, I don’t like that brittle bit…
Kum Dollison says:
April 1, 2011 at 9:44 pm
Nice piece of satire there!
“In the UK alone, Vestas employs more than 550 people.” …. thanks entirely due to generous subsidies wrenched forcibly from the British taxpayer….
On the plus side, these wind turbines over water, when they roto-splode, will not be near any people, so the risks should be lower.
My question is, what happens to the micro climate down wind? A field of 2000 wind turbines in the North Sea must have some effect on the surface wind speed to the lee of the field. Does this effect the amount of water vapour picked up by the air and subsequently effect rainfall or does it have no effect at all. It’s hard to believe that taking all that energy out of the wind wont have some effect somewhere.
Graham says:
April 1, 2011 at 8:39 pm
Graham, there are already floating nuclear power plants which have operated without a hitch for decades:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimitz-class_aircraft_carrier
Keep one thing in mind regarding cost: Compared to what?
Oil got as low as $10.00/bbl one month in, IIRC, 1999. Today, Louisiana Sweet was selling for $120.00/bbl.
Fossil Fuels get more expensive as time goes on. It’s just the nature of the beast. Wind, and Sunshine don’t. The largest part of the cost of wind, and solar is, by far, the Capital Cost of building, and installing. This is a fixed cost that is normally amortized over 20 yrs., or less.
These could be little (big) “Cash Cows” in the year 2034. Maybe, sooner.
Dave, I have a hunch they would have just kept on spinning. One thing I’m positive of is that they wouldn’t have started to “glow in the dark.”
And, the groundwater would have still been potable. And, the vegetables, edible.
WUWT now famous
I turned on the PC early today, and had a look down the global warming news, and what .. or watt did I see.
At 5th place behind a load of old dross was an article about an article that had been printed in WUWT. http://www.salon.com/news/global_warming/?story=/tech/htww/2011/04/01/climate_skeptics_betrayal
You are now so famous, that some third rate journalist in need of a story can just turn to your blog and know they can hang on your coat tails by making pithy comments on your latest
hairstyledressloverwork.