Guest essay by Eric Worrall
At €125 million per floating turbine, vs €20 million for a fixed offshore turbine, the new technology still “has a long way to go on the economics”. But people are getting excited, and EU cash is pouring into this expensive new wind power scheme.
A New Weapon Against Climate Change May Float
The wind power industry sees an opportunity in allowing windmills to be pushed into deeper water.
By Stanley Reed
This article is part of a special report on Climate Solutions.
FERROL, Spain — A strange-looking contraption that could represent a new frontier in clean energy wallowed in the water alongside a coal dock here in a bay in northwest Spain.
This floating windmill with a tower about 600 feet high was sheltering in the harbor. After waiting out the rough winter seas and the disruption from the coronavirus pandemic, it was towed in late May to join two others anchored in the Atlantic in 330 feet of water 11 miles off Viana do Castelo on the northwest coast of Portugal.
…
Mr. Pinheiro’s machine floats on three partly submerged columns, each about 100 feet long. Steel catwalks bridge the gaps between the giant cylinders. Sensors signal to pumps to add or remove water from the columns to keep the platform at the right level for optimal wind generation. In a gentle sea in the bay, the vessel, which weighs thousands of tons, seemed remarkably stable.
…
WindFloat, whose cost was pegged in 2018 at 125 million euros, or about $137 million today, is majority owned by EDP Renewables. About €60 million came through a loan by the European Investment Bank, a wing of the European Union, which supports what it considers to be promising renewable technologies.
By comparison, turbines of similar size installed on the sea bottom cost around €20 million each when they are used in large facilities in which the costs can be spread among scores of machines. The new technology still “has a long way to go on the economics,” said Alexander Flotre, an analyst at Rystad Energy, a market research firm.
…
Mr. Metelo said that wind farms of this size would likely generate electricity at a cost of around €200 per megawatt-hour, a wholesale power measure, over their lives, which may extend to 25 years. He estimated that with far greater scale and even larger turbines expected on the market in the future costs could come down to the €50 range, which is competitive with turbines attached to the bottom.
…
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/04/climate/floating-windmills-fight-climate-change.html
An interesting concept, but by their own admission still a long way to go until it becomes cost competitive, even with existing mainstream wind turbine technology.
From my understanding of the technology, platform sway could be a big problem.
In 2011 a senior wind engineer told me bearings are the Achilles heel of wind turbines, his words were “we need a quantum leap in bearing material technology”. As of late 2018 turbine owners were still experiencing problems with wear. The bearings wear out too fast, but if they make the bearings bigger and stronger, turbine performance plummets, because larger bearing create greater friction.
Who knows, maybe technology has advanced since 2018, or maybe the engineers who designed the floating platform have discovered new tricks to protect the bearings from damage. But a turbine platform which adds substantial sway to already overloaded turbine bearings, it will be interesting to see how long the turbine lasts.
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The image caption at the head of the article is `Artist impression`
I don’t think he/she/they should give up the day job just yet.
It did strike me as odd that the tower was on one of floats and not in the center of all three.
But I’m not an artist or an engineer that sees the world through Green-colored glasses.
I was thinking that they oriented the extra 2 floats to always be downwind.
All the images I could find are copyrighted, so I figured a quick sketch might be useful. I don’t pretend to be a commercial artist.
Understood.
You’re a more practical artist than they are engineers.
Gyroscopic forces on a large rotating mass are considerable. Even in a gentle swell these will be evident and over time will result in fatigue failure in both the bearings and blade structure. Additionally inherent maritime salt particles apart from creating corrosion, erode the aerodynamic efficiency of the blades due to the high velocities involved. I expect these two factors will also very much narrow the available wind window for generation.
I doubt any of those who agreed to fund this had ever been at sea in a force 10 gale.
I recall some years ago being in an aircraft carrier in such conditions when the stern was rising and falling through about 40 feet in under a minute. On reaching harbour it was found that the catwalks around the flight deck had been bent vertically up .
Good points, as an engineer these issues are huge.
No way these are going to “last” for 26 years…I am willing to bet they start failing in under 10. Just too much going on while dealing with salt, water, storms, waves, tilting, etc.
I have an idea. Let’s use some common substance, say underground fossil carbon stores made from ancient plants, to heat up water and produce steam. The steam acting under pressure runs through a series of steam turbines which turn a generator producing power. The steam is then cooled producing clean water. I bet this might work for a lot less money. Small, compact (compared to wind farms), and easy to maintain, it likely would last for 50 years and cost a tenth as much. (<– Yes, sarcasm, but also true)
I wonder if one day a journalist , instead of telling us that ” But people are getting excited, and EU cash is pouring into this expensive new wind power scheme,” might enquire about exactly from where the money is pouring out. I wonder also if the people who are in such a state of orgasmic delight are the same as those who have seen their livelihoods destroyed by the latest import from China.
We are saved! pfft.
Lets me figure this out. A energy producer that is unprofitable at 20m euros will suddenly be profitable at in a new version at $125m euros. Please send these people to economics 101.
But not the same economics class AOC got credit for attending!!
For starting, teach them to spell economics.
PS
Until now, I saw no “Greenie” able to use a calculator the right way.
What ever the are “calculating”, even the easiest + and – calculation overstrain them.
How’d anyone pronounce this guy’s name: said Alexander Flotre,
Not floater by any chance?
Wind sucks, on land or on the sea.
“About €60 million came through a loan by the European Investment Bank, a wing of the European Union, ”
Brexit looks even better now.
Floating wind turbines could save us from having any cash savings or relible power. There fixed it.
“a senior wind engineer told me bearings are the Achilles heel of wind turbines, his words were “we need a quantum leap in bearing material technology”
Magnetic ‘bearings’ could be a solution to the eternal friction of such a spinning mass, as long as your power supply never failed to keep supplying the energy required to keep it magnetically ‘floating’ within a tolerance, on multiple axis of thrust. Then it would be metal on metal and really bad things happen when you have that kind of friction. Like a total literal melt down and probably a fire, and everything comes unglued and flies off into pieces. Many examples on YouTube of windmills flying/burning to pieces.
Perhaps a type of magnetic bearing, within a Kingsbury type oil bearing, where all the thrust is absorbed within an incompressible fluid, which is already reduced by the magnetic bearing taking all the thrust with the failsafe being the Kingsbury oil bearing absorbing friction within an oil pressure between the metal surfaces if the magnetic ‘bearing’ force field fails. If both fail even momentarily for some reason, it is still catastrophic failure. Kingsbury type bearings are old and tried tech, but magnetic ‘bearings’ are probably still in R&D. Would be nice to hear an expert comment on the trouble with these windmill bearings, since that is probably the biggest mechanical challenge to longevity and affordable maintenance. When you have to change the main thrust bearings, you need the crane to take off the blades, take the Nacelle all apart, separate the gear box, drive train, brakes etc etc. Just to replace the massive bearing.
Probably something can be engineered to work better, but at what cost for the entire project to be economically viable without subsidization? If it is subsidized, why bother tying to figure out the bearing failure if your losses are compensated for? Which is the fundamental problem of intermittent renewables. It is all distorted when subsidies are supplied to an inferior product, when the base load product is already that much more superior. And the base load is required to be sacrificial to allow the inferior intermittent to even work, when it does work but can’t be predicted. Power engineers who operate grids are just amazed that they are expected to try and make this work, and then for what benefit when you need the spinning reserve full capacity, spinning on back up in case the wind or Sun dips off for 2 minutes. Pretty soon the base load asset is up and down like a yo-yo, which costs fuel and wears out quicker than if it could just operate 24/7 at its rated output. All this is ill thought out and unnecessary. And very expensive.
The capital cost per floating wind turbine is also preposterous and will not be economical, even if the capacity factor is much higher than onshore wind. Especially for such a limited life time in a salt water harsh environment with a limited life span of a few decades at best, and probably not even that before major maintenance or replacement is required, which is usually the main thrust bearings at 7-8 years on average or less.
I suppose on the positive side, at least they can be towed to a dry dock junk yard for storage and hopeful recycling and not left out in the ocean or the blight of onshore wind turbines left to rust as we see happening already. There are some commercial operational floating windmills recently installed, but haven’t heard any update on performance, probably because no one wants to admit the real cost and problems they have encountered.
Magnetic bearings are already in service and have been for several decades now. They are primarily used for high RPM applications involving light loads where minimizing wear and frictional losses is a high priority. They are also useful for vacuum and zero gee applications that interfere with lubrication in conventional bearings. I doubt current designs are suitable for something as massive as a wind turbine, particularly since wind turbines normally operate at fairly low RPM.
Huge forces straining against the bearing in all different directions. They would need to be strong magnets.
Yes, would need to be a 360 degree magnetic bearing that could balance thrust on the fly from every directional force. Since it is rotating relatively slowly at the centre of the hub, it should be easier to predict where the thrust force is going to be (or read sensor input) and adjust the magnetic field accordingly to counteract the direction of thrust.
Similar to high speed Maglev trains (derived from magnetic levitation) a system of train transportation that uses two sets of magnets, one set to repel and push the train up off the track, and another set to move the elevated train ahead, taking advantage of the lack of friction. The same principal should be able to be configured into a rotating hub, and counterbalanced by the input of the electromagnetic field to adjust to the thrust on the fly. Would be a parasitic load on the electricity produced, but in theory should be able to be implemented. The main thrust bearing of these giant windmills are probably their biggest technical challenge, and the costliest repair.
Have the engineers discovered a way to avoid the slaughter of countless seabirds?
Good points, as an engineer these issues are huge.
These floating Wind Turbines will mark yet another milestone alongside the Left’s long march toward World Insanity and wastage.
A wind turbine cannot produce the legally required 50/60Hz energy waveform.
They are a complete scam and cannot boil a jug.
They cannot be synchronised to the grid.
They do produce useless harmonics (dirty energy) which through smart meters are fraudulently added to consumers power bills.
Wind turbines are manufactured by an industrial economy and yet wind turbines cannot power an industrial economy.
Wind turbines cannot produce the energy that went into making them.
They do not off set the CO2 produced in their manufacture.
The whole wind turbine industry is a massive rort.
The subsidies are criminal.
We’re going to park these things in the bay of Biscay?
Well known for storms and rough seas..
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.marineinsight.com/life-at-sea/why-the-bay-of-biscay-is-dangerous-for-ships/
Nah it’ll be fine…
The biggest flaw of all wind turbines, especially offshore ones, is that the design assumes peace time and no war going on.
If there’s a war then these things are easy to destroy:
1) Stand either on open sea or on open terrain available for the enemy to come close.
2) No active protection possible (too many turbines for a given amount of power to guard them)
3) No passive protection possible – the design has to be a tall, relatively thin to the height pole – on of the shapes least resistant to damage (most resistant being cube/globe shape).
4) Small enough to be taken down by small ships, drones, underwater drones and other cheap military equipment that is available to everyone.
As an example – many nuclear power plants can withstand a plane crushing into them. A small number of such plants for the desired amount of energy means they can be protected by anti aircraft and anti ballistic missiles.
Base your energy on wind turbines = loose war.
Some basic math. Assume 10MW turbines operating at 50% capacity factor, producing an average of 120MWh per day. Or 70 barrels of oil equivalent a day. Would you justify a floating offshore oil platform for so little?
This scheme is of course not pioneering. That honour belongs to Statoil/Equinor.
https://www.equinor.com/en/what-we-do/floating-wind.html
The Hywind project is of course heavily subsidised. Its 30MW of capacity are connected to Batwind – not a bat munching eco crucifix, but a toy 1MW, 1MWh battery. It was of course enough for more Norwegian virtue signalling in the Tampen project to use 88MW of floating turbines to provide some power to the Snørre/Gulfaks offshore oil and gas platforms. The $550m cost is funded by a $260m grant, and is financially justified by reducing the payout on CO2 emissions tax for offshore operations. In short, it would never normally go ahead.
https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/features/floating-wind-turbines/
I checked out the subsidy paid to Hywind. It is 3.5ROCs per MWh, currently worth about £175/MWh, on top of the market price.
This is even a better idea than “solar powered submarines.”
With or without screen doors?
There will come a time when there are so many wind turbines out there sapping energy from the atmosphere that wind circulation patterns will be altered, resulting in….Climate Change!
They don’t know where to go with their money!
So my electric bill tells me that I pay 2 cents per kwh (generation cost). The equivalent of $20 per mwh.
Question: how is $200 per mwh (order of magnitude greater) remotely competitive? Even if reduced to $50/mwh is still 2.5 times more expensive.
I expect the numbers are even worse. My 2 cents per kwh includes the cost of backup (when units are offline for maintenance). Do the $200 per mwh include backup costs for when the wind isn’t blowing?