Eric Worrall writes:
According to Breitbart, Germany’s flagship Bard 1 offshore wind farm has turned into a bottomless money pit, with stakeholders frantically lawyering up, scrambling to pin the blame and ongoing money hemorrhage onto other parties. BARD Offshore 1 is a 400 megawatt (MW) North Sea offshore wind farm encompassing 80 5-megawatt turbines. Construction was finished in July 2013 and the wind farm was officially inaugurated in August 2013. The wind farm is located 100 kilometres (62 mi) northwest of the isle Borkum in 40 metres (130 ft) deep water.
The magazine Windpower monthly reports that Bard Offshore 1, developed and built by Bard, is owned by project company Ocean Breeze, which in turn is owned by HypoVereinsbank. Getting it fully commissioned in August 2013 had taken more than three years, with many setbacks and cost overruns.
Breitbart reports that according to the German magazine Speigel “everything has turned to the question of who is responsible for the fiasco – and the costs.”
The project is estimated to have cost €340 million in the last year alone, as investors struggle to salvage something of value, from a deeply flawed system which has never functioned as the designers intended. Full details at Breitbart.
My thought – if even the Germans, with their legendary high precision engineering skills, can’t make offshore wind work, surely it is time to pull the plug on this technically infeasible dead end?
Coming back to wind mills and the great lobby of Hot lite in favour of it.
I was surprised by some arguments of him on the Irish situation, which seemed so fine, and contradicted that I know in wind mills caracteristics. So I take some time to know more on the Irish situation.
To summarize, the situation of Ireland (all Islands) is caracteristic of a small country (the same for Denmark):
– surrounded by sea, many possibilities to erect off shore farms, small distances from consumption
– connection with the UK grid (500 MW) enough to deliver an instantaneous help (because it is peanut for UK) so it acts like a spinning reserve
If I take the situation of 2012, the absolute peak of consumption is 7GW; the fossil fueled plants are 8GW and
wind 2MW (2,6 now) and it is planned to go to 3,5 MW in 2020. But in any case, Ireland will have to save the 8 MW of fossile fuels, as even with an increase of wind capacity, it cannot be excluded no wind at the peak, as shown by the data of EIRGRID.
All this over-investment will gain about 20 % of consumption of coal and /or gas, no more, and due to the intermittence, the more there will be windmills, the less the marginal gain will be.
I wonder if a revamping of all the fossil fuel plants (and specially the ban of peat, which is probably horribly inefficient) could achieve a better gain.
Regarding the supply by ADCT, it is true that AD are more flexible, but very expensive and with a small unit capacity; so it is not thinkable to have the totality of the reserve with that in a big grid. And ADCT, because of the second part of the process, has the same problems of flexibility as normal fuel plants. So my opinion is that if you have a big part of the grid from wind, the others lose some efficiency anyway.
To summarize, there are a lot of hidden unconvevient truths in the description of the Irish situation, and what is possible for a small country having the help of the connection with a big one is not possible for a whole continent.
Hard to know what you’re saying here volauvent. As I said previously, I expect that wind will always require 100% backup so the issue about no power at peak load is then irrelevant as the power is there to supply it.
I’d be interested to know what the characteristics are of wind power are that you said are in conflict with what I have said here.
I find your post quite hard to follow. What is ADCT?
Wrt to the interconnector to UK remember this really only went into service last year (after technical difficulties in late 2012). Yes, it is part of the solution (wind capacity or not it effectively lowers spinning reserve for traditional plants) and works well with wind power.
Intermittence is fully accounted for in the wind models and the capacity factors I quoted.
Are you sure your negative attitude to wind is not blinding you to some of the positive realities of it?
Hop lite
you said” As I said previously, I expect that wind will always require 100% backup so the issue about no power at peak load is then irrelevant as the power is there to supply it.”
Is the back up power there by miracle? Who paid it? Who will pay the fact that they loose efficiency in providing a constant up and down short term back up?
You must understand that what is possble for a small coutry thanks to the proximity of a much bigger one is not for the whole continent. In UK, Germany and France the companies shut down all the gas power plants because they loose money: the spot price is decreasing (sometimes negative when there is a lot of wind), they provide less energy (as the wind and sun is regulatory imposed ti the grid) and in the same time they are obliged to buy the wind and sun power at a very high price. so the gas plants disappear as the grid need urgently them for the back up.
This is a complete crazy situation; I am not blind, I am just angry to pay for that, and anxious to see how the EU grid will pass the next winter.
Volauvent,
‘Is the back up power there by miracle? ‘ – no it was built, no miracles required.
‘Who paid it?’ – electricity customers of course ultimately (and possibly taxpayers generally too). If you look at my post above again you will I said that grid with wind is more expensive than without it as 100% backup is required.
Re the link to UK you are quite mistaken here. Yes, it is part of the longer term solution but it is only active since last year and the only other interconnector is the Moyle interconnector which has had a troubled service history and has been out of service for extended periods. It did not significantly affect wind generation on the island when it was out of service (when there was no other interconnector). Prices and commercial realities influence power flows much more than technical needs on these interconnectors. (e.g. Ireland has an oversupply of thermal capacity and UK an undersupply but yet 2.2TWh – 8.5% of demand – was imported from UK to Ireland last year – purely for commercially reasons).
Don’t confuse market commercial drivers with technical requirements or underlying economics. Power system generation is probably always more efficient when it is centrally planned rather than left to market forces as the market is too short-term focussed which brings about inefficiencies and technical shortcomings.
Hoplite
You ask Volauvent
“Positive realities” of wind-powered subsidy farms!?
They are expensive, polluting, environmentally damaging bird-swatters that only produce expensive electricity when the wind is blowing strong enough but not not too strong, and they do not produce electricity useful for an electricity grid at any time.
Please state which of these attributes you think to be a “positive reality” and not a liability.
Richard
Well a glimpse of one of the problems of “wind mills” can be had by looking at various forms of sailing ships.
Chinese Junks, would be one example, and the Hawaiian two masted catamaran is another. For modern designs, the recent Americas Cup racing yachts, would be a clue.
What all these designs demonstrate, is that sailors are fully aware of the phenomenon of vertical wind shear. The ancient Polynesian boat has two triangular sails, but the pointy end is down at the deck level, and most of the sail area is up aloft.
That is where the wind blows hardest.
So when you apply this to your megawatt windmill, you discover that the wind speed blowing on the top blade, maybe 300 to 600 feet above the water, is much stronger than what the bottom blade, maybe 50-100 feet off the water.
So both the axial thrust and the circumferential torque, are totally different for the different positions of the blade. The top blade generates much more power than the bottom blade, unless you deliberately kill the top blade power by feathering the blade, as it goes over the top.
As a result the three blades are subject to a pulsating axial and circumferential thrust, that is synchronized to the rotation, so they are literally shaking themselves to pieces.
And those huge spherical roller bearings, are being subjected to those load pulses, which is not a healthy load to apply to a precision bearing.
Well the rotating pulses, maybe don’t harm the bearings, but the axial pulsation, is going to create havoc.
The common (in USA) electric trolling motors, used on fishing boats, run quite smoothly when operated out of the water, with no significant blade loading.
But once down in the water, with the upper blade quite close to the surface, and the bottom blade much deeper, they too experience synchronous vibrating loads, that convince boat owners, that their trolling motor is way out of balance. It isn’t but their loading is, and they shake themselves furiously.
If you put the ocean windmill on a shorter tower, for a stronger tower, the differential wind shear is more severe, and if you use a taller tower, then its weight and cost go up rapidly with height.
I don’t know how effective it is to have individual feathering of the blades; I believe helicopter rotors do that, but then they also shake themselves to pieces.
How do you attach a picture to a reply? I have a scenario table I’d like to post here and comment on.
Hotlite
To answer my last reply, you said:”Prices and commercial realities influence power flows much more than technical needs”
Precisely, prices on the EU market are neither the result of technical needs nor real market; they are the result of crazy regulations which distort the needs and the prices. The consequences could be dramatic; no electricity companies want to invest in Europe now and nobody know how to get rid of this crazy situation.
Of course, if the programs were completely centralized in state owned companies, with a price fixed by the government and the electricity mix decided without the advice of the consumers it could be easier; but this has been tried in the past in several countries, and it seems that the results were not convincing.
coming to the UK connection, I have read the scenarii of the 2020 project, and it is said that the connection has an important role in it (avoiding more spinning reserve when the part of wind will increase).The problem of wind is occuring when it becomes a significant part of the capacities (for you 3,7 GW in 2020 for 8 GW in fossil fuels)
One of the other uncertainties also is the maintenance cost of off shore after a significant number of years; in the same time, you will have to replace the old fossil fuel facilities that you have maintained (ex the peat) without investments because of the huge financial effort in wind.
if the Irish people are happy to pay twice the investments in order to save (perhaps, it is not sure) 20 % of the gas and coal bill it is up to them. But I do not agree to pay EU subsidies for this myself.
I repeat: Ireland can do this because of a very partiular situation surrounded by sea, small distances, immediate reserve in the future provided by the huge UK grid.
A similar case in Denmark: the huge wind capacity is only possible because of the interconnection with Norway which has an overcapacity in hydro electricity.which is a good spinning reserve.
; it happens that sometimes Norway buy Danish electricity with a negativ price and when there is no wind, they sell at a high price. Norway consumers are happy to be helped to pay their bills by the Danish.
Jed Rothwell
“My thought – if even the Japanese, with their legendary high precision engineering skills, can’t make nuclear fission reactors work, surely it is time to pull the plug on this technically infeasible dead end?”
May I add my penny’s worth to the excellent response from Keitho at 12.42
The 40 year old power plant withstood the force 9 earthquake and was only brought down because it was located on ground too low to withstand the subsequent ten metre tsunami. Nothing to do with precision engineering only to an initial risk assessment which did not make sufficient allowance for the aftermath of the largest Japanese earthquake since records began.
“Let me add: After trillions of dollars of R&D and subsidies for 70 years, one accident at Fukushima lost more money and destroyed more assets than any other source of electricity in history, and forced the shut down of the entire industry. In one day, nuclear power was revealed as the most dangerous and expensive source of energy.”
Not true. Perhaps Mr. Rothwell has not heard of the bombing of the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams.
http://www.raf.mod.uk/history/bombercommanddambusters21march1943.cfm. Far more damage and much more expensive in lives as well as in money.
The shut down of nuclear plants in Japan and Germany and possibly other countries was not due to any scientific or engineering assessment as to safety but was due to the panic of politicians fearful of losing votes.
As to the number deaths caused by radiation following nuclear bombs or a disaster such as Chernobil, one should be cautious. For years after the event every death from cancer or leukemia for people who were living (or returned to live within a few years) in the medium vicinity of the incident has been attributed to radiation exposure. Thus those who might have died anyway from cancer or leukemia had they not been exposed to radiation were included. The only proper statistic would come from a study comparing death rates by age, sex and type between those who were deemed to be exposed and a control population living outside the designated area.
Such studies might have been done but I do not recollect seeing any. Perhaps they did not produce the expected results.
My guess is that ignorant politicians substituted non-lead-solder in place of the lead-solder that the engineers specified in the original plans. The electrical components are growing metal whiskers, a phenomenon which has been known for about a century. Any electrical component that is supposed to last longer than two or three years should be built with lead-solder. The metal whiskers have also been observed to grow faster when subjected to a high voltage potential. All of those electrical components out in the North Sea are going to continue to short themselves out, due to an irrational fear of lead.