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”.
They also forgot to add to the triad “big subsidies”.
The effect of turbulence on downstream turbine performance is given at http://www.2004ewec.info/files/23_1600_leojensen_01.pdf
An impressive photo of the effect of turbulence and the generation of wake clouds can be seen at Horns Rev at http://www.dewi.de/dewi/fileadmin/pdf/publications/Magazin_37/07.pdf
Kum, I can’t make up my mind whether you are still playing an April Fools Joke.
\\ Fossil Fuels get more expensive as time goes on. // Uh, no, certainly not in a constant dollar basis. Professionally I survived at least two period < $25/bbl. Even for oil, we are not at the peak price today.
But your statement is falsified by Shale Gas. Now every LNG project in the world is going to make minimum dollar unless it has a Japaneese or S. Korea destination.
But let's take that 7 MW Windmill which is equivalent to 39 BOE/Day
39 bbls/day
365 days/year
30 Years (double it, it won't make a scrap of difference)
427,050 bbls/windmill
An economically marginal development cost for oil would be <$40 BOE.
So to economically compete with oil, the capital cost of the
500 foot, Cat 5 rated, offshore windmill needs to come in at
< $17 million.
I venture they cannot do the environmental impact statement and foundation for that money.
It may be a Green Project, but economically it is well in the Red. From the vantage point of the Destin beaches, it doesn't look like a Blue Project, either.
And, please, don’t get me wrong; I am Not anti-nuke.
I am not exactly pro “nuke-on-an-active-fault,” however. Nukes at Salinas, Ks? I think so. At San Onofre? Not so much.
It seems like the “trick” to Wind is several wind farms spread out over a Wide geographic area. Of course, it seems only logical that you would include solar, biomass, and something conventional (like nukes.)
Kum Dollison says:
April 1, 2011 at 10:53 pm
Those are totally unnecessary precautionary measures. I guess you’ve never heard that the linear no-threshold model is false and I guess you’ve never heard of radiation hormesis. Look them up for your education.
Anyone who introduces “glow in the dark” is showing their ignorance.
Enthalpy says:
April 1, 2011 at 8:05 pm
The wind is provided by the politicians
Humm?, actually the requirement they forgot, besides wind, was OPM, other peoples money.
Big Wind is probably the biggest con going. Despite Kum Dollison’s disinformation, we Brits only have to look back to December 2010 (the coldest in 70 years) when Coal was producing 40% of our electricity (helped out with a significant amount of French Nuclear) and BigWind (3000+ turbines) gave us less than 0.2%.
No freezing up of coal & gas plants. Plenty of frozen turbines and no wind.
We have seen the cost of this nonsense. We look at our power bills (and taxes).
Dollinson says:- “The 20th Century is past history, time to move on.”
Yeah, right. Move on to a 14th Century power source? You must have a LOT of shares in these things.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/wind_energys_ghosts_1.html
Kum, still think wind energy is the way to go?
I must assume that monstrosity is standing on a very stable base.
Just what is going to be built under the sea surface?
Lets have some figures for that part of the project.
Like quantity and quality of steel and cement.
Here is something much, much better:
http://www.tidalenergyltd.com/
Kum Dollison says:
April 1, 2011 at 10:53 pm (Edit)
“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. ”
This is entirely false, as any economist can tell you. Your numbers are typical Hockey Team goal post setting. Firstly, todays dollar is worth about 1/2 of a 1999 dollar, so in constant dollar values, todays crude oil price is equivalent to about $50/bbl in 1999 dollars.
Secondly, todays oil prices have a lot more to do with political instability, wars, etc in crucial oil producing countries: Nigeria, Libya, Iraq, Venezuela, Qatar, Oman, combined with Obama’s illegal refusal to issue any offshore drilling permits despite court orders finding him in contempt for doing so. If these sources of instability did not exist, then oil prices today would be somewhere around $50-60/bbl in current year dollars or about $25-30/bbl in 1999 dollars.
Thirdly, if you look at the long term price of oil from the 19th century onward, you would actually see that the long term smoothed average price of oil has always gone down over time.
Won’t the Queen make a fortune out of these monstrosities? No doubt Prince Andrew will do the marketing!
Daily Record
“THE Queen is set to coin in many millions a year in a windfarm windfall.
The Royal Family’s jackpot haul was slipped into the measures Chancellor George Osborne announced last week – as he slashed jobs and benets for millions.
The Royals will pocket 15 per cent of the profits from the Crown Estate’s £6billion portfolio in return for the Civil List being scrapped.
As the seabed within UK waters is owned by the Crown Estate, they will earn millions from a huge expansion in shore windfarms.
And experts say offshore wind farms could bring profits of £250million a year within a decade …”
So the UK taxpayers are yet again subsidising the Queen and her brood………
Yet another reason to be concerned about the liabilties of wind energy. Damage to crop production. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8419796/Wind-turbines-hit-bat-populations.html
Wind Power Generation on a cold Day in Alberta
March 1, 2011 was an extremely cold day in Alberta.
On that day the total wind power generated at any time was between 0 and 2 MW for most of the day and never any larger than about 30 MW, out of an installed wind-power generating capacity of 777 MW.
Details about power generating sources for that day (actually an instant around 9 a.m.) can be seen in a screenshot (linked to source) at http://lce.folc.ca/2011/03/01/wind-power-generation-on-a-cold-day-in-alberta/
However, as you can see in the weekly report for the week of February 27 to March 5, 2011, identified farther down, wind-power generation was that low during most of that week, which is quite normal for most weeks of the year. Moreover, wind-power generation is totally erratic at almost any time — just like the wind, of course.
The Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) shows hourly statistics for weekly intervals at their website. Looking at any of those reports, it is easy to see that when wind-power generation drops to near-zero during peak-demand hours, demand for spare generating capacity climbs to close to $1,000 per MWhr. Here is an example of that:
Wind Power Operational and Market Report
Week of Feb 27, 2011 to Mar 05, 2011
http://www.aeso.ca/downloads/Weekly_Wind_Report_Feb_27_to_05_Mar.pdf
Look for: “3.0 Wind Generation and System Load
The purpose of the graph is to illustrate how wind power varies with system load and the hourly pool price.”
If you wish to look up any of those reports for other weeks, go to the index at
http://www.aeso.ca/gridoperations/14246.html
It seems to me that it is extremely unlikely that any of those price fluctuations and steep increases during intervals of low wind-power generation are taken into account when feasibility studies for wind farms are being done. That simply means that the true costs of wind power are most likely enormously higher than even the most pessimistic cost estimates that float around lead people to believe.
“Moira says:
April 1, 2011 at 9:58 pm
…….
I say give it a whirl anyway.”
Very funny!
By the way those legs would never hold it.
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.
The actual largest cost of wind and solar will be the operational and maintenance costs. As for amortization over a fixed period of years, you are making an assumption that the physical plant will last for the fixed period of amortization.
I ran the calcs on that voltaic solar plant in Florida, amortized over 50 years (not at all likely to last anywhere near that long) at 5% interest (very low rate), and the cost of electricity for 4,000 homes and small businesses per month for about 8 hours of electricity per day was in excess of $260/month, far more than the cost for 24/7/365 electricity from coal-fired plants. That $260+ cost per month did not include any operating and maintenance costs.
All pie in the sky, funded not by private money, but suckered taxpayers. When private investors are willing to put ALL the money up for any of these absurd “alternative energy” schemes, without a trace of subsidy, I will listen, but not before then.
Pie in the sky, never to actually come by, but taxpayers and ratepayers sure to get the “servicing”.
Has anyone thought about the cost and engineering required for building the foundations required for one of these things, especially in the North Sea, with its deep water, strong tides, high winds, freezing temperatures etc.
The corrosion from salt spray will be a huge problem and as for the maintenance of one of these things – possibly creating some of the highest paid jobs in the world.
And what about their stability in +80mph winds?
Interesting to note that none have yet been built – any bets the politicians will order huge amounts of these things before they are actually tested in a real North Sea environment for a couple of winters?
I note that in the Vestas presentation they claim to have a factory in the Isle of Wight which employs over 600 workers. The past tense of the verb should be used in that sentence. The Vestas factory in the IoW closed in 2009 with the loss of all jobs.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/5988852/Isle-of-Wight-occupation-of-Vestas-wind-turbine-factory-ends.html
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article6188962.ece
The only wind turbine blade manufacturing in the IoW is now carried out by ex-Vestas employees who manufacture blades for micro-turbines.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/27/vestas-wind-turbine
No doubt the remainder of Vestas’ claims are equally as trustworthy.
Before making ever bigger windelecs, how about making them run for more than 2 years without breaking. The number of gearbox failures in windelecs is becoming a hugely expensive epidemic. Take a look at any large windfarm, especially an offshore windfarm, and count the dead ones. (I think this is why they now prefer offshore windfarms, it keeps them out of sight and stops the general public from seeing how useless these things are.)
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2010/06/wind-turbine-gearbox-reliability
http://www.powergenworldwide.com/index/display/articledisplay/337582/articles/power-engineering/volume-112/issue-8/features/keeping-wind-turbines-spinning.html
Windelecs have very asymmetric loads on them. The winds are higher at the top of the blade circuit than the bottom, continuously stressing the blades and the hub. Add some asymmetric ice to that, and you have a recipe for blade, hub and gearbox failure.
Making a bigger windelec will make the situation worse, not better. And I wonder how much extra wind power you can collect with these – the bigger the the windelec, the further apart you have to place them.
.
Vestas will, allegedly, only test their new blades in their IoW facility.
http://www.iwcp.co.uk/news/news/no-mass-blade-production-for-isle-of-wight-38041.aspx
>>Richard111 says: April 1, 2011 at 11:48 pm
>>I must assume that monstrosity is standing on a very stable base.
You mean like these?? Oh, wait a minute….
http://www.noturbinesin.saddleworth.net/Pictures/FallenTurbine1.jpg
.
@peter_ga says: April 1, 2011 at 9:29 pm
In a heartbeat!!
Why is it that I can’t see people running TO the wind turbine in the nearby field when things get rough?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5gIAaxSsE61rvxfUAkoa5Jr2aZY3g?docId=6406471
Note one part of the triad, polititians. What that really means is, they want subsidies, ie. they want your tax dollars, your money taken out of your pocket and put into theirs. When doing a scam, if you want the really big bucks, do a big, grandious looking sceme. That is all this is.
It doesn’t matter if it fails to produce reliable energy, it doesn’t matter if it needs too much maintainance, and it doesn’t matter if it blows over. After they get all those lovely tax dollars out of your pocket, THAT is what matters.
Folks, I have got to know – how the heck do they get the turbines, and then blades, UP there? I mean, I have a hard time picturing how they even manage that one when its a large ground based unit… let alone one in the ocean, let alone a monstrosity like this planned one (if it isn’t an April Fools’ by Anthony!). Would someone enlighten me please?
>>Jim says: April 1, 2011 at 8:25 pm
>>jon shively, April 1, 2011 at 8:10 pm :
>>The real failures … will be when … variability of wind plant
>>electricity produces brown outs
>>You do know, that was due to extreme cold … that caused problems at
>>those thermal plants? IOW, it had nothing to do with wind … is that
>>your understanding?
Notwithstanding what happened in Texas, brownouts are a continuing problem across Europe, because of the variability in wind power. Spain is particularly effected, and this has nearly brought down the entire electrical grid on numerous occasions:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article384768.ece?token=null&offset=12
And look what happens, when the lights go out. Space-Age to Stone Age, inside a couple of days:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Blackout_of_2003
Strangely enough, the only European country NOT facing any brownouts, is Europe’s largest producer of windpower – Denmark. And how does it achieve this remarkable feat? Well, it does not use any of its wind power, of course. Windpower in Denmark is so strong, that it would bring the Danish grid down in a trice – so in an ingenious and duplicitous leap of conviction, politics and religion, Denmark has decided not to use any of its windpower whatsoever, and to sell to Scandinavia instead. (Scandinavia can throttle its large hydro facilities to compensate.)
http://www.thomastelford.com/journals/DocumentLibrary/CIEN.158.2.66.pdf
Mind you, this costs Denmark an arm and a leg – about $300 million a year, to sell the windpower that they cannot use (plus the huge cost of creating this vast wind ‘carpet’ in the first place). You know this renewable energy religion makes sense….
.
I confess I’m baffled by the flimsy platform they are proposing to put this thing on. I mean if they were building this on a rock platform like Rockall, then this might work.
But a thin platform stuck to the seabed?