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”.
Remember every niobium magnet made helps to pay for the civil war in the Democratic Congo Republic.
Using wind kills people!
This will be rolled out as usual – guaranteed subsidies that make it profitable even in the face of frequent breakdowns.
Wind power in Germany probably has a negative EROEI – the industry has the habit of replacing still-working wind turbines with bigger ones when this makes economic sense, this is called “repowering”. They effectively get paid for scrapping still usable equipment, and replace it with bigger ones to maximize the ratepayer milking.
When the windmills eventually, against all expectstions, become the prime movers of industry and energy users, the cost per KWH will be just what you can afford to plug into. It is not an issue that you have a mega mega sized house with airconditioners in each room and the basement too, if”n you can afford to pay for the kWH rate the windmills will “generate”, you’ll be a preferred user, and those that can’t afford to “plug in” will just have to burn candles. There will be no such thing as a “brown out” or a “black out” or any other reduction in supply once the wind and water power thingy’s get going and oil/coal/Nuke etc drops away, as soon as the demand exceeds supply the last in first out will apply and you will automatically be disconnected from the company’s books, standing in line until more windmills get made and get connected. The Government, who have a mandate to serve the people who prefer them, will serve those that put them into office best, and the other side will become the end of the line mob, waiting in queues for the next supply of their energy ration allotment. One could of course go it alone, and insatll a small wind generator in the back garden or roof top, (with the permission of the Government), and if’n the output gets to about 1KW you can expect to be able to watch the telly while the battery bank is charging up.
Where have I heard “it’s too big to fail” before?
Relevant questions.
1 Period to first maintenance and design life underwater steel platform
2 ditto the superstructure and blades
3 ditto the engine and parts
Stephen Rasey – thanks for all the calcs. Pls can you do one more : if we replaced all our energy needs with wind power, by how much would it slow the Earth’s rotation?
The Warwick Wind Project in the UK did a test of micro turbines located on buildings and found that the capacity factor was 0.85% , yes that is an output of less than 1% of capacity !!! Which is remarkedly different from the advertising blurb we get from the manufacturers and the many govt. sites which support them.
http://www.warwickwindtrials.org.uk/resources/Warwick+Wind+Trials+Final+Report+.pdf
But here in the UK we are used to government spin hyping up the performance of these wind turbines. One example I came across when I followed up a comment posted by a WUWT reader about two turbines installed atop their local council offices ‘to increase awareness of renewables’ by Kirklees Council in Huddersfield
“COUNCIL officials have admitted: “We can’t get our wind turbine repaired”. More than FOUR MONTHS after one of the two turbines on top of Civic Centre 3 broke down, it is still out of action…The two turbines only generated enough energy to cover a third of their upkeep in 2008.The two turbines brought £2,078 into Kirklees Council coffers, but cost £6,431 to maintain and repair.They cost the council £101,000 to buy and install.” (31.7.2010)
http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-west-yorkshire-news/2010/07/31/kirklees-council-s-wind-turbine-woes-deepen-86081-26967147/
“A KIRKLEES Council wind turbine is still out of action – 11 MONTHS after it broke down.One of the two turbines on top of Civic Centre 3 has not worked since last March. This week the 27ft windmill was still slumped over on the roof of the town centre building.” (9.2.2011)
http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-west-yorkshire-news/2011/02/09/kirklees-council-civic-centre-turbine-still-broken-86081-28138298/
So I was amazed to come across this piece on a local government website which cited this installation as a case study in an article dated 24.1.2011 and claimed under ‘Achievements’
“• The wind turbines have performed well given their urban location and have required minimal maintenance”. [!!!!!!!!!!!!!!]
http://www.sustainablegov.co.uk/local-government/energy-and-climate-change-local-government/civic-centre-3-case-study-energy-from-the-sun-and-the-wind
For those interested in following up output figures for UK windfarms this is an excellent site
http://www.ref.org.uk/images/PDFs/REDs10/Wind%202010%20v1.pdf
They forgot to mention another important ingredient in constructing these cathedrals of human insanityas well: green subsidies.
Windfarms don’t run on the movement of air.
They run on the movement of vast amounts of money.
>Erik Anderson says: April 1, 2011 at 8:15 pm
>It’s not an entirely bad idea really. Humid wind carries more momentum than desert >wind.
Why is that? Water vapor is less dense than air so humid air is less dense than dry air.
This is just the first steps towards this;
Anthony,
Have you ever calculated out how much wasted energy there is in this wind turbine configuration? What wind actually does not touch the blades?
It is 20,632 Square Meters. Power generation has yet to conceive that it uses all that space but only takes out 492 square meters of energy.
7 years ago, I learned that all the energy in that circle can be used but the configuration is totally foreign to current power generation. The science that was never conceived shows how the density in the material shifts in motions as well, depending on the speed of rotation.
The bigger they are the harder they fall … or is that “fail”.
We’ll need a lot of windmills
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/8418822/Greenhouse-gas-emissions-hit-new-peak-as-economy-grows.html
“Greenhouse gas emissions hit new peak as economy grows”
Images of frozen lighthouses come to mind.
Height doesn’t much help. David Mackay’s excellent book “Sustainable Energy” shows how taller turbines need more area, so fewer turbines per acre/hectare. In addition sea based turbines cost much more to install, much more to maintain, and you can’t use the area to install photo-electric generation (whose minimal capacity is hardly affected by the turbine shadows. Quadrupal Whammy.
164 metres diameter? Wow! Think how much energy that thing could produce if they flipped it upside down, and tried intercepting ocean currents at a ton per cubic metre rather than wind at a few grams!
(For the sake of general wonderment, I’m ignoring the logistics of keeping the thing running, but then so do the proponents of operating them this way up.)
There is an ongoing government sponsored competition to resolve a dangerous problem of offshore wind turbine access:
http://www.carbontrust.co.uk/emerging-technologies/current-focus-areas/offshore-wind/pages/offshore-wind-access-challenge.aspx
The following is all hearsay and rumour, and I cannot be bothered to investigate in depth but:
One of the competitor companies informed me that there were six fatal accidents (six separate incidents) offshore Denmark in 2010 caused by personnel trying to transfer from a workboat to wind turbines in order to carry out emergency repairs/maintenance.
The deaths are recorded as maritime accidents and do not appear as wind turbine related accidents.
The average wave height at the main wind farm offshore denmark is 3 ft and the existing transfer system requires individuals to jum across a 3-6ft gap from a heaving work boat deck onto a vertical ladder- insane! and banned in every other industry working at sea.
Currently there is a moratorium imposed by the Danish Maritime Authority on personnel accessing the offshore turbines due to the risk involved, and about 10% of all offshore turbines are now offline because of this.
They have also found it is impossible to replace a worn or broken main rotor bearing because the rotor has to be removed and this requires a floating crane that costs US$90,000.00 per DAY to rent.
If only Freud were alive today, I’m sure he’d have something to say about bigger being better, and size not being everything.
One side effect of the rush for wind looks like creating jobs for crane makers. Enercon even ended up buying Liebherr to make crawler crane capable of handling their erections. But there still aren’t many of these massive cranes in Europe and presumably site access for the larger crawler cranes can be a challenge.
For offshore access is presumably less of a problem but availability of very large crane barges I’m guessing is. I’m also guessing that the barge cranes would need good weather to operate safely, which would increase downtime and costs or losses. Vestas may get some good PR on the “mine’s bigger than yours” front, but not convinced it’ll help operators O&M cases. Smaller may be better in that respect.
Atomic Hairdryer
2011/04/02 at 4:54 am
My understanding is that they use ones already used in the oil industry. Ironically hurricane Katrina, caused a lot of them to be tied up in the gulf for a while.
When a wind turbine explodes you do not get a 20km radius of land made uninhabitable for generations.
When a wind turbine explodes you can go and reclaim the rare earth magnets (if used), steel and copper and recycle them.
UK gov subsidies creating 550 jobs – if these jobs were not created then there would be 550 more people claiming benefits from the same gov. What is the differential?
Wind turbines do not all use rare earth magnets (see the Enercon technical manual.)
Wind turbines do not all use gear boxes (see the Enercon technical manual.)
Wind turbines can be low noise (see the Enercon technical manual.)
Wind turbines in Japan are still operating well after the earthquake.
No wind supporter expects massive reduction in conventional generating capacity – you will still need some generators idling ready in seconds (just as at present- nuclear plant scramming in seconds requires replacement capacity available to fill the hole in seconds), some ready for action in hours and some as long term backup i case of gas/oil/nuclear failure.
However as gas becomes more scarce (coal, nuclear, oil generators can be phased out) it seems sensible to use low cost, low pollution sources of energy to preserve the reserves of gas until someone comes up with a fusion reactor!
Wind turbines do not suddenly remove GW of capacity from the grid – wind does not suddenly stop over vast areas
“positive indications from governments” = governments willing to use taxpayers’ money to subsidise Vestas’ profits?
Dang,
I thought the 500’+ span each way was pumping oil free of human enterprise until I realised that the artefact was absent of real workers.
That’s some beast in the ocean, even if it is at dream-state. I don’t recall passing port to tankers around that size which were loaded with base minerals, but then those tankers had a load piloted and captained that was to be of greater utility.
I might not get the “glorious” logic of windmill construction, but ought it not make more sense to build a 2.5MW windmill that actually delivers 2.5MW than have to build a much bigger 7 MW that at best will deliver those 2.5 MW?
I don’t disbelieve Mr. Kum Dollinson, but if he is really passionate about wind power, I would suggest that he sell all of his possessions (car, house, financial investments – everything) and invest in the proceeds in wind power. He can also start his own wind power company and show us all how it is done profitably and without subsidies. Are you up for that challenge Mr. Dillinson?
As for the offshore wind turbines (aka wind powered seagull grinders), I think we could hire Greenpeace and NASA GISS to do the maintenance – it would be a great career change for them both…
What will be the impact on shipping in the North Sea if there are windmills every 57 acres of sea surface? Can’t imagine that industry will be very enthused about having to thread their way through those things in the dark in rough seas.
Slightly O/T, there is an interesting book about the construction of lighthouses off the Scottish coast in the 1800s–The Lighthouse Stevensons. Seems Robert Louis Stevenson trained as a lighthouse construction engineer before he became an author. The book describes the challenges of construction on rock outcroppings in the seas around Scotland. Not for the faint of heart. While today’s technologies may be better, I can’t imagine the seas are calmer.
Why is it that so many artists are so totally clueless when it comes to science? The turbine is obviously not headed into the wind. It’s off by about 45 degrees. What does that do to the efficiency? Maybe it’s stopped.
It’s bad enough for the artist to make a rendering that’s obviously flawed, but somebody at Vestas paid for it and accepted it and published it in their press release. What does that say about Vestas?