From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
This is an absolute disaster for Miliband’s floating windfarm target:
https://x.com/adissentient/status/1840690466477535685, which generated
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Kincardine produced 144 GWh last year, so the total cost equates to £562/MWh.
They have a PPA in place which generated £13.3m at £92/MWh. On top of that ROC subsidies worked out at £217/MWh
There is NOTHING more expensive than FREE RENEWABLE ENERGY.
The ONLY thing free about renewables is their Part Time, Weather Dependent fuel source that is likely unavailable with the energy is needed during Peak Demand
Peak is at night so Solar…Forget it
Seasonal Peak occurs in Summer or Winter during blocking highs so Wind vanishes.
At night during blocking highs both vanish for hours to days
AND all five floating turbines of the Hywind farm have been towed to Norway for major maintenance after only five years in service. You couldn’t make it up!
There is almost nothing more corrosive than salt water. Something as simple as a residential outdoor compressor for a heat pump exposed to the sea breeze will corrode to the point of needing replacement in just a couple of years.
UK 50 MW Kincardine floating wind system was placed in service on October 2021
It produced 144 GWh in 2023
It was predicted to produce 200 GWh
CF = 144000/(8766 x 50) = 0.329, a far cry from 0.457 predicted by multi-millionaire Owners
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Located 15 km off the coast of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, water depths 60 to 80 m
It has five Vestas V164-9.5 MW and one V80-2 MW,, each installed on WindFloat® semi-submersible platforms, designed by Principle Power.
https://www.offshorewind.biz/2021/10/19/worlds-largest-floating-offshore-wind-farm-fully-operational/
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Operating results in year 2023:
All numbers are in UK pounds; $1.33 per UK pound
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Cost = Finance 30 mil, Admin 5 mil, Other 46 mil = 81 mil
Production cost 81000000/144000 = 562/MWh
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Income = Tax credit 6 mil, Subsidy 31 mil, Sales 13.3 mil = 50.3 mil
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LOSS without subsidies = 81 – 13.3 = 67.7
LOSS with subsidies = 67.7 – 37 = 30.7
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It operates under a PPA at 92/MWh and receives subsidies at 125/MWh, for a total of 217/MWh.
https://x.com/adissentient/status/1840690466477535685
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World’s first floating wind farm Hywind Scotland faces shutdown for ‘heavy maintenance’
Norway’s Equinor confirms component changes needed on all five Siemens Gamesa 6MW machines operating since 2017
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https://images.dngroup.com/image/eyJ3IjoxOTYwLCJrIjoiYzI5MGY0MzUwNTIzZmM2Y2FjYWFhMmI5ZTQwYjA4ZTUiLCJmIjoid2VicCIsImNyb3AiOlswLDk3LDE2MDAsNzk2XSwiciI6MiwibyI6Imdsb2JhbCJ9
One of five 6MW Siemens Gamesa being towed out to Hywind Scotland in 2017
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Published 12 January 2024, 10:03
Norwegian energy giant Equinor will temporarily remove all five floating wind turbines from the pioneering Hywind Scotland array later this year after discovering a need for “heavy maintenance” on the Siemens Gamesa machines deployed there, Recharge has learned.
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The 6MW turbines will be towed back to Wergeland on the west coast of Norway, as part of a maintenance program that is likely to take around four months and will disrupt power output from the project operating 24 km off Peterhead since 2017.
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All units will be reconnected back on the Hywind Scotland site when the maintenance is complete, a spokesman for the Norwegian company confirmed.
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The work will involve changing various components, including bearings on the turbines, as well as increased routine maintenance in the future.
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“What we see from operational data, such as excessive stresses on bearings, points to the need for… heavy maintenance on the turbines,”
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The cost of towing from Scotland to Norway, repairs and lack of production, towing from Norway to Scotland and reconnecting, will be significant.
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If such wind turbines were installed in Maine, round-trip towing, and lack of production would be much greater.
Equinor have also recently decided to discontinue offshore wind projects in both Spain and Portugal and had earlier pulled out of Vietnam.
It’s head of renewables recently told Reuters that the company may consider exiting additional markets.
“It’s getting more and more expensive and we think things are going to take more time in quite a few markets around the world”
https://www.offshore.wind.biz/2024/08/29/equinor-axes-offshore-wind-plans-in-spain-and-portugal-weighs-further-market-exits/
Great comment
Will add to my article
Take more time?! 😅🤣😂😆
When IT DOESN’T WORK, just admit it and move on!
“Income = Tax credit 6 mil, Subsidy 31 mil, Sales 13.3 mil = 50.3 mil”
This is not a wind farm, it is a subsidy farm…
Nailed it.
Yep, far more income in Tax Breaks and Subsidies than in actual electricity generation sales. End ALL subsidies and these government approved Black Holes will expend all their residual Hawking Radiation and fizzle out with a whimper
No subsidies for 30 years, no wind systems, says Warren Buffett
Like ALL OF THEM.
Towed to Norway? Hope there is fair weather.
It would be funny if one sunk.
It would be funnier if they ALL sunk. AFTER they spend all the repair money.
And even funnier if they couldn’t get insurance.
Just put a couple of Sails on it and Let the wind take it there
Well, it’s win-win for the subsidy farmers. If they make it, they can resume sucking on the taxpayers teat.
If not, they’ll blame it on ‘climate change,” and insist that indicates a need for more of this stupidity!
“a maintenance program that is likely to take around four months”
Let us know how long it actually takes- probably much more than 4 months.
And the towing will be done by DIESEL POWER, presumably. 😆 😅 😂
No, the things have enormous airscrews, they’ll put solar panels on the semisubs to make electricity to turn the airscrews and off they’ll go, no problem.
Do I need /sarc ?
Waves and wind put the stresses on the bearings. Norwegian mariners have known about waves and winds for centuries, if not millennia. Norway gets most of its electricity from hydro plants along the mountain rivers flowing into the fjords. Maybe they don’t know so much about wind turbines.
The subsidy (3.5ROCsMWh) was worth £217/MWh. Total income was therefore £309/MWh – and they still lost money.
Structural engineers calculated an estimate of 4.5 years mean time to failure for just the blades.
Some blades fail after minor summer winds in New England
What if there were a stronger wind, say 30 mph?
Shutting down to save the blades would cut PRODUCTION
In a rational world, these financial figures would spell the death knell of floating wind farms. Unfortunately, Ed Miliband has control of Britain’s energy policy and I fear that he will simply increase the subsidy levels for floating wind farms to the point where they will make a “profit”. This is the level of insane political decisions that we have become accustomed to in Britain.
Increasing subsidies would mean increasing taxes or borrowing, neither of which will end well for Herr Schtarmer.
It’s even worse than that. The subsidies for renewable energy are added to electricity bills which is why Britain has the highest electricity prices in the world.
But aren’t you proud to be saving the planet? /s
I wonder if Miliband is aware that there is a worldwide shortage of the three type of vessels required to build offshore windfarms and the large expansion of such windfarms that many countries are attempting can only exacerbate the situation
I am utterly confident that Ed Miliband is unaware of anything that contradicts his worldview.
I am not convinced Miliband is aware of his worldview or anything else.
So why does such an idiot get elected? And here I always thought the UK was a nation of common sense folks- unlike those idealistic Europeans.
British MPs get elected from parliamentary constituencies and Ed Miliband has a seat with a large inbuilt Labour majority. He is so useless as an MP that he came close to losing this safe Labour seat in 2019. However, in the last election the Conservative vote collapsed and he won easily.
Something is rotting in the U.K., already since 1945
Good. May such vessels all sink tomorrow.
LOL…ROTFLMAO
In a rational world…
In a rational world Kamala Harris wouldn’t be running for president. She wouldn’t garner a single vote
Um…wait…she didn’t garner a single vote and the world is far from rational!
No need to worry, latest wheeze is for Grid stability Flywheels, powered by Hamsters no doubt.
Will they also be made in China, as we have shut our steel making capacity down?
The hamsters will be bred in a laboratory in Wuhan.
Covid-20?
No, COvid 20
Covid-25
But of course. With COAL and plenty of it!
Not hamsters for the UK. Fintan Slye, head of our National Energy Systems Operator is Irish and he is going to get leprechauns to do it. 🙂
No it’ll be people. You know, “green jobs.”
It’ll be Unicorns so they have a method of directly collecting their flatus and eructation emissions
You’ve got a maths problem or a definition problem. Net loss of 31M divided by 144 GWh is about 220 pounds/MWh
He’s talking about the total cost of the power, £81,000,000/144,000 = £562/MWh
And here in Maine they are still pushing ahead with this nonsense.
In Maine, the socialists will never stop with their floating wet dream, unless subsidies are reduced to ZERO
Plus CO2 is a life gas for building ALL fauna and flora, including crops, on earth.
It is near the lowest level it has been for 600 million years
Net Zero leads to economic strangulation and CO2 suicide
There is not enough fossil fuel left for CO2 ever to be any problem
All this is well known by the IPCC, but it continues to blame CO2 for all ills, a big flood here, a big wind there, whereas water vapor is at least 100 times more important regarding maintaining a livable earth
Floating Offshore Wind Systems in the Impoverished State of Maine
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/floating-offshore-wind-systems-in-the-impoverished-state-of-maine
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Despite the meager floating offshore MW in the world, pro-wind politicians, bureaucrats, etc., aided and abetted by the lapdog Main Media and “academia/think tanks”, in the impoverished State of Maine, continue to fantasize about building 3,000 MW of 850-ft-tall floating offshore wind turbines by 2040!!
Maine government bureaucrats, etc., in a world of their own climate-fighting fantasies, want to have about 3,000 MW of floating wind turbines by 2040; a most expensive, totally unrealistic goal, that would further impoverish the already-poor State of Maine for many decades.
Those bureaucrats, etc., would help fatten the lucrative, 20-y, tax-shelters of mostly out-of-state, multi-millionaire, wind-subsidy chasers, who likely have minimal regard for: 1) Impacts on the environment and the fishing and tourist industries of Maine, and 2) Already-overstressed, over-taxed, over-regulated Maine ratepayers and taxpayers, who are trying to make ends meet in a near-zero, real-growth economy.
Those fishery-destroying, 850-ft-tall floaters, with 24/7/365 strobe lights, visible 30 miles from any shore, would cost at least $7,500/ installed kW, or at least $22.5 billion, if built in 2023 (more after 2023)
Almost the entire supply of the Maine projects would be designed and made in Europe, then transported across the Atlantic Ocean, in European specialized ships, then unloaded at a new, $500-million Maine storage/pre-assembly/staging/barge-loading area, then barged to European specialized erection ships for erection of the floating turbines. The financing will be mostly by European pension funds.
About 500 Maine people would have jobs during the erection phase
The other erection jobs would be by specialized European people, mostly on cranes and ships
About 200 Maine people would have long-term O&M jobs, using European spare parts, during the 20-y electricity production phase.
https://www.maine.gov/governor/mills/news/governor-mills-signs-bill-create-jobs-advance-clean-energy-and-fight-climate-change-through
The Maine people have much greater burdens to look forward to for the next 20 years, courtesy of the Governor Mills incompetent, woke bureaucracy that has infested the state government
The Maine people need to finally wake up, and put an end to the climate scare-mongering, which aims to subjugate and further impoverish them, by voting the entire Democrat woke cabal out and replace it with rational Republicans in 2024
The present course leads to financial disaster for the impoverished State of Maine and its people.
The purposely-kept-ignorant Maine people do not deserve such maltreatment
Electricity Cost: Assume a $750 million, 100 MW project consists of foundations, wind turbines, cabling to shore, and installation at $7,500/kW.
Production 100 MW x 8766 h/y x 0.40, CF = 350,640,000 kWh/y
Amortize bank loan for $525 million, 70% of project, at 6.5%/y for 20 years, 13.396 c/kWh.
Owner return on $225 million, 30% of project, at 10%/y for 20 years, 7.431 c/kWh
Offshore O&M, about 30 miles out to sea, 8 c/kWh.
Supply chain, special ships, and ocean transport, 3 c/kWh
All other items, 4 c/kWh
Total cost 13.396 + 7.431 + 8 + 3 + 4 = 35.827 c/kWh
Less 50% subsidies (ITC, 5-y depreciation, interest deduction on borrowed funds) 17.913 c/kWh
Owner sells to utility at 17.913 c/kWh
NOTE: The above prices compare with the average New England wholesale price of about 5 c/kWh, during the 2009 – 2022 period, 13 years, courtesy of:
Gas-fueled CCGT plants, with low-cost, low-CO2, very-low particulate/kWh
Nuclear plants, with low-cost, near-zero CO2, zero particulate/kWh
Hydro plants, with low-cost, near-zero-CO2, zero particulate/kWh
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Cabling to Shore Plus $Billions for Grid Expansion on Shore: A high voltage cable would be hanging from each unit, until it reaches bottom, say about 200 to 500 feet.
The cables would need some type of flexible support system
There would be about 5 cables, each connected to sixty, 10 MW wind turbines, making landfall on the Maine shore, for connection to 5 substations (each having a 600 MW capacity, requiring several acres of equipment), then to connect to the New England HV grid, which will need $billions for expansion/reinforcement to transmit electricity to load centers, mostly in southern New England.
Floating Offshore a Major Burden on Maine People: Over-taxed, over-regulated, impoverished Maine people would buckle under such a heavy burden, while trying to make ends meet in the near-zero, real-growth Maine economy. Maine folks need lower energy bills, not higher energy bills.
So, what you are really saying is, there will be massive numbers of climate refugees leaving Maine seeking a livable existence.
except of course for the filthy rich living in mansions on the coast
“Maine government bureaucrats”
I bet they’re very well paid. Here in Wokeachusetts, they’re all upper middle class. Most people who have such jobs are going to fanatically obey the bosses- since they’d never get paid that much in the real world.
Those unelected, woke, socialist, greedy bureaucrats feed on the trough of goodies provided by the elites, such as rides on private planes to go to conferences in 5-star places, all to get favorable decisions, that screw the rest of us.
CARBON DIOXIDE: A POLLUTANT KILLING US ALL, OR THE FOOD OF LIFE? YOU BE THE JUDGE.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/carbon-dioxide-a-pollutant-killing-us-all-or-the-food-of-life-you
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Flora and Fauna Need More CO2, at least 1000 ppm
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Plants require at least 1000 to 1200 ppm of CO2, as proven in greenhouses
Many plants have become extinct, along with the fauna they supported, due to a lack of CO2. As a result, many areas of the world became arid and deserts. Current CO2 needs to at least double or triple. Earth temperature increased about 1.2 C since 1900, due to many causes, such as fossil CO2, and permafrost methane which converts to CO2.
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CO2 ppm increased from 1979 to 2023 was 421 – 336 = 85, greening increase about 15%, per NASA.
CO2 ppm increased from 1900 to 2023 was 421 – 296 = 125, greening increase about 22%
Increased greening: 1) Produces oxygen by photosynthesis; 2) Increases world fauna; 3) Increases crop yields per acre; 4) Reduces world desert areas
The ozone layer absorbs 200 to 315 nm UV wavelengths, which would genetically damage exposed lifeforms.
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Energy-related CO2 was 37.55 Gt, or 4.8 ppm in 2023, about 75% of total human CO2.
One CO2 ppm in atmosphere = 7.821 Gt. Total human CO2 was 4.8/0.75 = 6.4 ppm in 2023. See URLs
To atmosphere was CO2 was 421.08 ppm, end 2023 – 418.53, end 2022 = 2.55 ppm; natural increase is assumed zero; to oceans 2.50 ppm (assumed); to flora and other sinks 1.35 ppm
Mauna Loa curve shows a variation of about 9 ppm during a year, due to seasonal variations.
Inside buildings, CO2 is about 1000 ppm, greenhouses about 1200 ppm, submarines up to 5000 ppm
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Respiration: glucose + O2 → CO2 + H20 (+ energy)
Photosynthesis: 6 CO2 + 12 H2O (+ sunlight+ chlorophyll) → 1 glucose + 6 O2 + 6 H20
Plants respire 24/7. Plants photosynthesize with brighter light
In low light, respiration and photosynthesis are in balance
In bright light, photosynthesis is much greater than respiration
https://gml.noaa.gov/webdata/ccgg/trends/co2/co2_annmean_mlo.txt
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/new-study-2001-2020-global-greening-is-an-indisputable-fact-and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/05/anthropogenic-global-warming-and-its-causes/
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/summary-of-world-co2eq-emissions-all-sources-and-energy-related
https://issuu.com/johna.shanahan/docs/co2_pitch_4-3-24_baeuerle_english
“many areas of the world became arid and deserts”
Not just due to a shortage of CO2- but that shortage doesn’t help.
Another place I always thought had common sense- old time Yankee common sense.
How do you get a tax credit onto the books when you have made a loss and are not paying tax?
Carry it forward for when you do make a profit?
It’s all rubbery figures to me. And how do you spend 5 million pounds on administration?
Enter it on the Corp Tax return CT600 as a loss to be later carried forward so a future profit will be tax free.
£5M on admin is a way of paying out tax free to the hangers on.
Future profit?
I doubt it.
If you play it right and prepare then you can in your second last year generate a profit untaxed and extract the money, then go bust the following year and leaving the investors etc and suppliers high and dry.
The owners have taxable profits elsewhere that are wiped out by the tax credit
UK companies balances sheets can be sold and bought including deferred tax rebates ie losses, couple of years ago the need for the buying company to be in a related field was dropped.
Knowing that there is no actual profit to be made, the government makes the “tax credits” transferable.
As Warren Buffet honestly sums it up (paraphrasing), “The only reason Berkshire builds wind farms is for the government tax credits that can be used to reduce taxable income from other Berkshire businesses.”
Millipede doesn’t do maths.
Can I just say, this is the most brilliant website.
These floating behemoths are just bogus perpetual motion demonstration machines. They take more energy than they produce. If they were net energy producers, they would be profitable.
Perpetual motion subsidy harvesting machines
The bigger the machines, the bigger the subsidies
That chart indicates how far underwater floating wind is.
Wow. Subsidies are 2.5x revenue generated.
That is a failed business model.
These things are taxpayer trough feeders. There was never a “business model” beyond the government enforced ponzi scheme.
“£562/MWh”
Oh, but I’m sure most people in the UK will be proud to be combating the climate emergency. /s
So their sales didn’t even cover the administrative costs? This crap has gone on long enough, shut them all down.
Subsidize stupidity and you get…MORE STUPIDITY.
One can only assume the reason the people pushing “green energy” have been unable to learn this after decades of such results is the level of their own stupidity.
Well they were looking to fickles producing hydrogen fuel from water for your car but alas on top of what Fortescue previously discovered-
Australia suffers major setback in global race to turn water into hydrogen (msn.com)
Thanks for the slushfunds but no thanks.
Story tip: great article by Alison Pearson in the Telegraph tearing Milliband and Net Zero to shreds.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/10/01/ed-milibands-net-zero-dream-will-destroy-britain/
It’s a good read with a lot of truth, you can read it without subscribing here …
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/ve-seen-ed-miliband-net-180000067.html