By Roger Harrabin BBC environment analyst, Norway
- 23 July 2017
The world’s first full-scale floating wind farm has started to take shape off the north-east coast of Scotland.
The revolutionary technology will allow wind power to be harvested in waters too deep for the current conventional bottom-standing turbines.
The Peterhead wind farm, known as Hywind, is a trial which will bring power to 20,000 homes.
Manufacturer Statoil says output from the turbines is expected to equal or surpass generation from current ones.
It hopes to cash in on a boom in the technology, especially in Japan and the west coast of the US, where waters are deep.
“This is a tech development project to ensure it’s working in open sea conditions. It’s a game-changer for floating wind power and we are sure it will help bring costs down,” said Leif Delp, project director for Hywind.
So far, one giant turbine has already been moved into place, while four more wait in readiness in a Norwegian fjord.
By the end of the month they’ll all have been towed to 15 miles (25km) off Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, where they’ll float upright like giant fishing floats.
While the turbines are currently very expensive to make, Statoil believes that in the future it will be able to dramatically reduce costs in the same way that manufacturers already have for conventional offshore turbines.
“I think eventually we will see floating wind farms compete without subsidy – but to do that we need to get building at scale,” said Mr Delp.
How big? The jaw-dropping dimensions of the technology used:
- The tower, including the blades, stretches to 175m (575ft), dwarfing Big Ben
- Each tower weighs 11,500 tonnes
- The box behind the blades – the nacelle – could hold two double-decker buses
- Each blade is 75m – almost the wing span of an Airbus
- The turbines can operate in water up to a kilometre deep
- The blades on the towers have been a particular focus for innovation.
- Statoil says the blades harness breakthrough software – which holds the tower upright by twisting the blades to dampen motions from wind, waves and currents.
The operation to begin shifting the first of the 11,500 tonne giants happened dramatically in the half-light of a Norwegian summer night.
Crews secured thick cables to tug boats and used remote-controlled submarines to check for obstacles.
Finally the giant was on the move, floating on a sealed vase-like tube 78m deep, its bottom filled with iron ore to weight the base and keep it upright in the water.
The price of energy from bottom-standing offshore wind farms has plummeted 32% since 2012 – far faster that anyone predicted.
The price is now four years ahead of the government’s expected target, and another big price drop is expected, taking offshore wind to a much lower price than new nuclear power.
HT/Auto
Neptune has always had a way of exposing mans arrogance when we intrude into in his domain.
‘The Peterhead wind farm, known as Hywind, is a trial which will bring power to 20,000 homes.’
How noble. If they didn’t have power already.
‘The operation to begin shifting the first of the 11,500 tonne giants’
BTW, how much energy does it take to build an 11,500 giant, and move it into position? How many years before energy balance?
I love the way these pro wind folks ignore the enormous costs that arise when you substitute unreliable, uncontrollable pwer generators onto the grid – this requires duplication of capacity. The greater the amount of unreliable capacity, the greater the amount of duplicative, back up capacity that’s needed. For those who know nothing about the electrical grid economics, the greater the output of a power generator (i.e. the power generator’s output, expressed as a percentage) , the cheaper the cost of its kWhr output. For example, when the grid started accepting solar and wind power, regardless of when it was generated, they then curtailed their input (and purchase) of nuclear power, causing the baseload nuclear plants capacity’s to drop significantly, from their usual 90%+ capacity to sometimes only half that. Today’s nuclear plants cannot quickly ramp up or down in power – they were designed and expected to operate as baseload plants, always
being operated at near their max capacity. But even if they could quickly ramp their output power up and down, the uranium fuel savings wouldn’t have much effect on their total operating costs – these days uranium fuel costs are only 3/4 of a cent per kWhr. This means that essentially cutting the purchasing of a nuclear plant’s output by half nearly results in the price of their output kilowatthours output to double. This is why
nuclear plants in certain section of the country were losing millions and in danger of shutdown, while those in places like South Carolina (57% nuclear, soon to be 80% nuclear) continue to produce power that’s about as cheap as any power source and are not losing any money. If the grid required the wind generators to produce power only on demand, the wind power operators would lose enormous amounts of income and the turbines could not be maintained and would, one by one, go dead. Wind power generators, as can be seen,
entail a large amount of side effect costs, usually ignored or greatly underestimated by the wind turbine manufacturers. That’s why you get such disparate estimates of levelized cost of power from different sources.
What’s hilarious is that all of the hoopla is about simply trying to make the turbines more resistant to wear and tear, which is NOT their main problem, which is their inability to provide power on demand, which is required by all other power generators. Wind power belongs in the 19th century, when it was useful for powering sailing ships and pumping water out of wells not located near electricity outlets or before they even existed. Those applications did not require a constant power output. Wind power simply does not meet the requirements of our world, and batteries (some wind turbines are required to have small ones) are used simply to provide power as the wind dies, allowing the grid to (hopefully) ramp up a reliable open cycle gas turbine power generator to replace the lost wind power. People should realize that batteries cannnot magically transform an unreliable power generator into a reliable generator. Batteries STORE energy, they do not create energy. The wind can die for days or weeks or even moths sometimes, far beyond the capacity of any battery bank. And if employed, how are those batteries going to be recharged? Where’s the energy coming from? How can a wind farm that start gain producing power also going to recharge those batteries at the same time?
The biggest lie is the claim that future, cheaper offshore wind turbines will be cheaper than nuclear power.
Well, first off, future nuclear power will NOT consist of the huge light water reactors now being built. And secondly, Great Britain , for whatever reason (I suspect the need for grid extensions) is paying a lot more for the nuclear plants they are buying than others are buying elsewhere. More importantly, advanced nuclear reactor technology, in the form of factory-built molten salt reactors, has a levelized cost of energy estimated by one developer (Moltex Energy) as less than $40 per MW hour, or less than 4 cents per kWhr. That estimate should be very accurate, since the major components their design employs, are already being built and sold for current nuclear plants. That’s the cheapest power around. These small modular pants can be constructed quickly and deployed many times faster than a conventional nuclear power plant.They are also capable of ramping their output up or down quickly, allowing them to be used as both baseload and peak load power generators, eliminating the need for fossil fuel backup capcity, which IS required by renewables.
They are boringly safe, physically incapable of harming anything or anyone. It’s typical that the wind manufacturers and fans do the same thing the lying solar folks did – find the most expensive nuclear plant ever built, one with cost overruns (often due to protests and obstructions from solar fans) and present that as the typical cost of a nuclear plant. Today, China (and Russia) will build the latest generation , Type 3+ nuclear plant for around $5 billion. That is a whole lot less than the cost numbers coming out of Britain for the plants they are having built, for whatever reason.
Molten salt reactors could be located close or within the areas of major power consumption, eliminating another cost – long transmission lines. Molten salt reactors have a very small environmental footprint,
and reuire very little human operating supervision. They will be the least dangerous power generator
available as well. It is typical that renewable enthusists talk about their technology’s future and ignore the very bright future of nuclear technology.
This is an excellent technological achievement. The key is being able to use the blades to stabilize the platform.
It solves the problem of Not-In-My-Backyard (NIMBY) and destroying people’s lives with the sound. It moves the problem of killing birds off of land. [Not knowing bird migratory patterns there, I don’t know if that will help the problem or not.]
As far as economics, it obviously doesn’t work now since it requires subsidies. I’m not optimistic that it will ever get economically viable since even if nominally it is competitive, you need a lot of infrastructure around it.
They say they use the blades to stabilize the platform. Are there any technical details available? These are very MASSIVE blades …
I despair that my government persists with this rubbish, and with wavepower generation. Both fail when we need them most, especially during long calm cold spells, and require massive amounts of overlapping investment in other sources (redundancy) to keep the lights on.
Scotland is surrounded by fast running, predictable and utterly reliable tidal currents: vast bodies of water which are almost constantly on the move. These make HEP at sea potentially the cheapest, and definitely the most dependable solution to the energy problem. There are short slack water periods which follow a pattern, but these differ at different places, and at most locations (not all) the direction of flow reverses every 6 hours. Both of these problems can be overcome without difficulty . . Build HEP stations at different locations (we would need more than one anyway!) so that the slack water periods are covered (though in many cases the slack water period is only momentary), and make the turbines reversible.
I worked as a lobster fisherman for much of my life and saw at first hand daily just how much power tidal currents generate: basically you have huge areas of sea on the move, and much of the flow occurs in waters which are less than 120 feet deep and at a speed of around 3 knots (much faster at many places). Politicians sitting in sumptuous offices must simply be unable to comprehend just how much power is going to waste just off our shores (never mind inlets such as the Firth of Forth or Firth of Clyde. I’m also surprised that more entrepreneurial types in the construction, power, and oil industries haven’t seen the profit making opportunities there are here.
There would be fish/mammals and flotsam/jetsam impingement risks but we already have methods for dealing with these.
1 cubic metre of water weighs 1 metric tonne. Times that buy millions you have some mass sloshing about in oceans. I never cease to be amazed when I see videos of people trying to drive across flooded rivers, fast flowing, in a 1 to 2 tonne vehicle and seeing them washed away.
Floating wind power.
It might work. Forget the electric turbine and run a shaft down the tower to a propeller to drive the boat.
The return of the clipper ships!
The clippers would run away from these things. No contest.
‘Flying Cloud’ made the trip from NYC going around the horn to San Francisco in 89 days and 8 hours. And BTW the navigator was a woman in the age when hardly any were involved in such activities.
Put a coal fired steam engine on her to drive the turbine.
Worlds biggest airboat.
And when they’ve reached the end of their useful life you just pull the plug and they sink to the sea bottom.
And become a shipping fishing hazzard.
Floaters will also take care of sea level rise.
http://www.nola.com/environment/index.ssf/2017/07/floating_islands_rising_seas.html#incart_2box
“Hurricane-prone Louisiana can see coastal waves higher than 50 feet. So Waals thinks the floating island concept might work best in protected inlets and bays, such as Lake Pontchartrain.”
Because of the circulation of hurricanes and the topography Lake Pontchartrain “captures” lots of wind and water, the destruction long ago of the little town of Frenier on the southwest as an example. Structures on the east end are supposed to stop this.
Migratory birds often stop on offshore Gulf platforms.
A lot of migratory birds will be stopped by these things.
The amount of fossil-fueled technology required to build, install, and maintain these turbines breaks my irony-o-meter. I suppose, though, in the future, battery-powered mining equipment will procure the raw materials, solar-powered blast furnaces and processing plants will produce the manufactured parts, and more battery-powered hauling equipment and ships will tow the finished turbines into place and install them.
All for the sake of a problem that doesn’t exist.
What is the cost per mill all included? What is the selfcost per kWh?
All electricity that made the tons of steel and chains, noedymium, GRE, copper, etc must take many years to pay back, also the CO2.
Offshore mills have shorter lifeexpectancy than onshore ones due to higher loads. 10 years?
May, could, if, perhaps, probably…. lot of words in this report that lack any level of certainty…except for the opening statement that says these new devices are MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE than the earlier ones…. could have guessed that one though!
Let’s all tip our hat to the myth of the CO2 scare, without which there would be zero reason for this discussion to exist at all.
And an added advantage is that they act like WWII garage balloons but with submarines.
Stupid autocorrect.
Barrage balloons
Just because one can do something, doesn’t mean one should do something.
Besides being an unsightly obstacle and an economic white elephant (as are ocean wind farms.), these contraptions will be annihilated by the sea.
Not if, when
Another issue: Who is going to pay to remove all these monsters when their useful life is exhausted.Looks like an expensive ordeal.
Also looks like a lot of fossil fuel is required to manufacture and get one of these into place as well as raw materials due to the gross weight.
Claiming the cost will go down when we mass produce these thy components does not seem like a valid comment since it rarely applies to such special design, large components, and a lot of mass underwater is inherently required.
The design inherently requires a lot of steel and iron below the surface of the water which seems to be greater than comparable offshore structures with similar energy production per lb of raw materials.
Also the reaction torque from the blades must create a large overturning moment which needs to be handled with the tethers or whatever. I am sure they considered this, but it would be interesting to know how.
The people building them are required by UK/EU law to have a decommissioning plan in place before they start building.
The first offshore wind farm reached the end of its planned 25 year life last year and is currently being dismantled
http://www.offshorewind.biz/2017/03/15/worlds-first-offshore-wind-farm-passes-into-history/
Maybe they could use it to create and store Hydrogen Fuel through electrolysis…If it could be stored, it would be a useful fuel…for whatever…
That goes for all off shore wind farms…
using water + electrolysis to create Hydrogen…
Several German projects doing just that JPP…
http://www.hydrogenics.com/2017/03/22/hydrogenics-awarded-2-4-mw-power-to-gas-plant-in-germany/
Hydrogen is ultimately put into local gas grid
Great. What’s the efficiency? In Germany, can you just add hydrogen to a natural gas?
“Also the reaction torque from the blades must create a large overturning moment which needs to be handled with the tethers or whatever. I am sure they considered this, but it would be interesting to know how.”
Most of the weight of a floating wind turbine is at the bottom well under water. If you flipped it upside down and then released it would flip back upright. There is also a lot go buoyancy in the base. The buoyancy puts a lot of tension on the anchor cable under a lot of tension the tension and the weight at the bottom keeps it up right in even the strongest winds. It will rock back and forth at the top but not as much as most people assume.
From the article:
Statoil says the blades harness breakthrough software – which holds the tower upright by twisting the blades to dampen motions from wind, waves and currents.”
This is the final thing they do to control the rocking motion at the top. Most of the side load on the tower is from thawing pushing on the rotor blades. The load is dependent on the pitch of the blades which is adjustable. For on shore wind turbines they adjust the pitch to maximize the power they extract from the wind. On the floating wind turbine the software monitors the tower motion and wind speed and power generated. The computer then uses that information to adjust the blade pics to cancel out the motion at the top of the tower while at the same time maximizing the power they harvest from the wind.
“Another issue: Who is going to pay to remove all these monsters when their useful life is exhausted.Looks like an expensive ordeal.”
If the turbine cannot be repaired, simply unplug it from the power cable and the anchor cables and tow it to shor and sell the metal for recycling. The money made from selling the metal typically pays for the removal. Most ships are not sunk when they reach the end of life. Most are cut up and the metal is sold to recyclers. The power cable and anchor cables are still in place and can be connected to a replacement turbine.
Valaker July 30, 2017 at 6:00 am
That is a pile of steaming moose dung. YOU claimed that Norway had all the angles covered, saying
So I pointed out AMONG OTHERS the Sleipner disaster, and no, I didn’t say lives were lost in it, that’s your fantasy. We were talking about how well you could take care of machinery.
You seem to think that the fact the Sleipner sank during testing excuses it and makes it all fine. In fact, it makes it worse. You’re claiming that doing all this stuff out in the open ocean is “peanuts’ … and you can’t even get through the test cycle without sinking your toy. Doesn’t help your argument.
Again this is bull dust. You cannot show me the quote where I said you claimed anything was “risk-free”, because I’ve said no such thing. Stop trying to put words in my mouth that I never said.
YOU, on the other hand, said that the operation and maintenance of huge complex seagoing machinery was “peanuts” and that you’d been doing “more complex stuff” over the last fifty years … riiiight.
All I did was look up your record of doing “more complex stuff”, which seems to have set your hair on fire. I was simply pointing out that Norway, LIKE ALL COUNTRIES, finds it difficult to keep big complex machines alive at sea. So sue me.
Sorry you’re getting all huffy when I point out that you’re no different from anyone else, and that Norwegian oil platforms and oceanic machinery can go very badly just like those of other countries, but that’s just the ugly reality.
Dear heavens, Valaker, look up the “tu quoque” logical fallacy, google is your friend. What the US coal industry or any other industry might or might not do is IMMATERIAL to your bogus claims about Norway. The coal industry could be killing fifty people an hour and your claims about Norway would still be nonsense …
w.
So much negativity from so many, many people. And a few optimists with a grasp on reality.
Here’s a link to the document from Statoil that describes in fairly good detail much of the technical aspects. Environmental, too, since it is the Environmental Impact Assessment report. This describes the history of earlier test projects.
https://www.statoil.com/content/dam/statoil/documents/impact-assessment/Hywind/Statoil-Environmental%20Statement%20April%202015.pdf
One would think that people would actually take the trouble to read the facts before spouting off.
Roger, had I not known that you held a degree in engineering, I would have suspected an engineering illiteracy. A grasp on reality: There will be this tall tower, gently swaying in high waves whipped by high winds. A really huge rotor at the very top. Bearings – it won’t be ball bearings; an asymmetric and heavy load requires something much more load bearing surface – maybe cylindrical roller bearings – just love to be gently swayed while working. To make the bearings really happy, supply them with Scotch whisky (naturally this technology is being deployed off Scotland). How much whisky do they need to last five years?
For Curious George, Yes, I have a degree and 40-plus years of experience in chemical engineering. As such, I am quite surprised at the comments on this topic.
First, land-based wind turbines do have a bearing issue when a gust hits. The tower is fairly stiff, not designed to bend much, if at all. That does, indeed do what you described, place a momentary stress on the bearing surfaces.
Contrast that with the floating offshore wind turbine. By its very nature, it “gives” when a wind gust hits. The bearing surface will have less wear and tear because of this.
Really, fellows. Think it through. Which trees blow over in a storm: flexible willow trees or the sturdy oak tree?
The document I referenced above shows a good drawing of the three-point anchoring system. There is plenty of room in that system for the tower to give.
What actually hurts a bearing is a sharp, sudden force. The kinds of things that happen to railroad engines that roll over a rough spot or a sudden bump in the rails.
Time will tell, of course. The swaying WTG (wind turbine generators) in Hywind project will likely have few, if any problems with the main bearing. By design, too.
Roger, thanks. As you say, time will tell. How long does it take for 11,500 tonnes to react to a sharp, sudden force? Maybe the tower itself flexes; then I wonder why onshore towers are stiff. We agree that there are immense engineering challenges. For me, the issue is the cost. The lifetime cost – including the maintenance. To be fair, I don’t want to include a decommissioning cost; a decommissioning cost of a nuclear plant is pretty much unknown at this time. It all depends on the level of perceived safety required. I recall a case of a truck overturned on a busy long bridge. The truck carried a demolition debris, containing asbestos. Hazardous material specialists were called and the bridge remained closed for half a day.
cephus0 July 30, 2017 at 3:41 pm
The biggest ship ever built at the time was the Titanic … care to remind us what happened to her? And there are a host of her smaller sisters sleeping soundly at the bottom of the ocean. How about the destruction of the Deepwater Horizon, one of the deepest-drilling oil rigs ever built? What about the Exxon Valdez, that was great fun. The Seacrest Ranger Drillship sank in a storm. The Ocean Ranger oil rig rolled over and went to the bottom. The Enchova Central Platform died in an explosion, along with 42 people. And this is far, far from an exhaustive list.
Given the numbers of giant maritime disasters, I truly don’t understand your objection. How is the cause of every one of them not “a combination of wind, wave, corrosion, and human error”?
Since all of those were sunk by “a combination of wind, wave, corrosion, and human error”, you’re making no sense at all. Those are all valid examples of the manifold problems of trying to take huge machinery to sea. Yes, as you point out, sometimes you can’t even get it out of the construction stage before it sinks, and THAT PROVES MY POINT!
So no, I’m not trolling you.
w.
“Given the numbers of giant maritime disasters” Don’t worry Willis, more tonnage ends up at Alang than at the bottom of the ocean.
Mark S Johnson July 30, 2017 at 5:06 pm
Since I never said one single word about whether more tonnage goes to the bottom than goes to the shipbreakers … why the heck are you addressing this to me? It has NOTHING to do with what I said. You’re just using the opportunity to take a cheap shot at me … why?
Gotta say, you’re another sick puppy like Roger Sowell. How about you go talk to him, he’s just your style.
w.
I’m addressing it to you because the “number” of giant marine disasters is small in comparison to the total activity of huge machinery at sea. Judging by the number of oil platforms and operating ships currently at sea, the problems of “wind, wave, corrosion, and human error” are not that problematical . Why do you emphasize the negative and ignore how well the problems of wind, waves, corrosion and human error have been dealt with ? You comparable to the person afraid of airplane flight who can list all MAJOR crashes from the past 20 years from memory, but neglects to mention the thousands of flights that are completed safely each and every day.
Guys, there’s also a huge difference between hydrocarbon disasters/accidents and a windmill falling over.