actual peer review science

The problem is that this more a political issue than a science or engineering one.

Each side of the argument has their own political points to score.

Wind power costs

However, nobody can deny that offshore wind is eye watering expensive.

Cost comparison

only thing i like about offshore wind is that its pissing trump off.

Compared with the construction and running of a coal plant?

Yes. The cranes, pile drivers, drills, etc do not have to float. They are on wheels and are relatively easily moved.

None of the construction team on land have to operate underwater wearing restrictive PPE to perform simple tasks. These team members do not require a support vessel costing ££££ to allow 1 or 2 people to perform construction work.

The building site doesn’t regularly become an incredibly hostile environment that wants to destroy your machinery and drown your team.

All on site personnel require significant, expensive, additional training just to be able work on site.

I could go on and on but anyone who understands the offshore construction environment would understand the huge cost and resource required to operate there.

Winston, you’re right, an individual offshore turbine will be about 5MW but the number that are being manufactured provide tangible economies of scale.
the company I work for (RWE npower) doesn’t build turbines one at a time. We have offshore installations that are 500MW -700MW. The development at Dogger Bank is well over 2000MW – considerably bigger than the UKs largest nuke and with output efficiencies that compare very well to other conventional generators.

http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/en/194914/rwe-innogy/sites/production-data-live/

The development at Dogger Bank is well over 2000MW

This is still just a proposal.

The logistical and engineering issues for the site are huge. All of the current projects are within 20′ of the coast which means that maintenance personnel can be based shoreside and be transferred by boat. Not the case with Dogger Bank.

With offshore oil and gas the construction was viable because of the revenue generated by even a single oil platform is massive. This is just not the case for offshore wind.

Solar power farms – NIMBY – I live in Scotland 😉

At first the number of windfarms that sprung up round me felt wrong, now 10 years later I don’t pay them any attention, unlike Grangemouth which when flaring, lights up the sky round here like Mordor from LotR and I cant actully see the plant, its 10-12 miles away. Same goes for The powerstations along the East Lothian coast line, loom large and look grim. Although the wind farms have a significant carbon cost due to their construction which I am led to believe they will never pay back.

Home generation on roofs and in gardens this what I hope for.

Can they not put turbines on floating platforms then sink them when out at sea?

Both wind and solar do nothing to meet peak demand on calm days in winter.

You’d best tell the people building the things in case they don’t realise that.

Can they not put turbines on floating platforms then sink them when out at sea?

Is this serious?

Molgrips – get yourself up to Aberdeen, you obviously have missed your calling. With Offshore concepts like that you will be a millionaire in a week.

I think a lot of people are missing the point that peak oil has already happened
fossil fuels (as well as damaging our planet) are only going to get more expensive
the price of oil is only going to go up and up and as far as I can see that only leads to greater instability in oil producing countries, feeding back into prices…….

OP’s nimbyism aside there are worse things to find appearing on your local ride

Winston
…and oil and gas extraction is going to previously impossible locations and depths.
I don’t quite understand where you’re going with your point – you want offshore to stop too ?

where did i say I wanted it to stop?

my point is that the price of fossil fuels isnt going to go down- as the extremes of the location its extracted increase

and that will make other energy sources more economically viable

thats as good a reason as any not to try and T into oil pipelines and extract free oil.

you want offshore to stop too ?

Offshore wind to stop yes. The money and resource should be directed to a more viable alternative.

Personally, I think “New Nuclear” is the better option.

Also, I like the idea of improving the efficiency of existing power stations with the long distance power transfer concept.

Is this serious?

It was a serious and actual question yes, not a rhetorical one.

I do have loads of great ideas though, just no-one listens to me 🙂

yeah damn those poverty stricken locals for wanting to get at some the oil pumped out of their country to run our Audis 😕

This site is good
Variable Pitch

Looks like PV is currently only making a small contribution.

Domestic solar could probably make an additional contribution although the government needs to sort out the feed in tariffs. Currently they best way to generate energy domestically is solar thermal but the feed in tariffs push people down the PV route which is less efficient.

It was a serious and actual question yes, not a rhetorical one.

However you install them they have be secured to/into the seabed or they would simply fall over. This requires substantial structures. There are a number of different techniques.

Have a look at this website Offshore wind construction It is very much a construction biased view point but does explain the process quite well. It may help you understand what is actually involved before you start arguing about how good and efficient it is.

From the website :-

Construction

Once a wind farm enters construction there will be a huge amount of activity, with the potential for up to 50 boats to be working on the wind farm at any one time. The types of vessels could include:

Substation Installation Vessel – often a heavy lift crane vessel. This transports and lifts the substation onto the pre-installed foundation;

Foundation installation vessel – the type of vessel used will vary with foundation type. For monopiles and jackets the most common type of vessel are purpose designed jack up vessels. These vessels will often transport the foundations from the quay side to the site and secure them to the seabed, usually by piling. Gravity base foundations are perhaps easier to install and can use less specialist barges to put them in position;

Turbine Installation vessels – usually purpose designed jack up vessels or large dynamic positioning vessels. These vessels tend to transport the turbines from the quayside and install them on top of the foundations. The tower is installed first and then different turbine manufacturers install the nacelle and blades in a variety of ways. 12 such vessels were ordered 2011;

Array and export cable laying vessels – Although the same vessel can be used for both, the export cable is larger and so requires a bigger carousel. Barges can be used although it is becoming more common to see large purpose built dynamic positioning vessels. The cables are usually ploughed into the seabed, although in more difficult terrain ROVs or mattressing/rock dumping can be used; and

Sea-based support – a range of vessels are used to support the installation process. These include crew vessels, anchor handling, barges, dive support and ROV handling.

Cheers for link Winston and trail rat interesting reading
You learn something new everyday
Ta

Personally, I think “New Nuclear” is the better option

I support new nuclear as part of a wider, generation mix, but it won’t work having all of our eggs in the nuclear basket. The UK has very distinct seasonal demand – 42000MW of demand ‘now’ with a winter peak of 55000-60000MW and a summer evening low of 17,000MW. Nuclears won’t cover that range of demand for GB. End of story. They can and do contribute but cannot pick up a huge amount more than they currently do.

Therefore GB needs the full mix of technology : onshore, offshore, solar blah blah

I support new nuclear as part of a wider, generation mix, but it won’t work having all of our eggs in the nuclear basket.

Quite. The French, because of their high percentage from nuclear, are heavily reliant on exports and imports of electricity to balance supply and demand.

Solar is the future. Solar road surfaces would be a good innovation, solar roof tiles, solar paving slabs and so on. That and lower power consumption generally by the population.

Solar road surfaces would be a good innovation

Not much chance of that. I mean we can’t even keep our current road surfaces in decent condition. I would put that one with the robot doing the housework, flying cars and pills instead of meals.

lower power consumption generally by the population

I agree. This would be good but is it realistic? Back in the day we had a TV in the living room and that was it. I now have a TV, DVD, Satbox and a media player. I bought my house last year that was built in 1955, it has hardly any power sockets which is a right pain for all the electrical stuff I have.
Are people willing to reduce tech in their houses?

tiles are not so far fetched though. just ruddy expensive

I agree. This would be good but is it realistic? Back in the day we had a TV in the living room and that was it. I now have a TV, DVD, Satbox and a media player. I bought my house last year that was built in 1955, it has hardly any power sockets which is a right pain for all the electrical stuff I have.
Are people willing to reduce tech in their houses?

You can use tech to reduce power consumption, less efficient electrical goods and technologies can be forced out of the market in favour of more efficient technology. The television I bought just a few years ago, should no longer be able to be purchased as better technologies are affordable.

All electrical goods could have an efficiency rating class such as washing machines have, and the government could then say in 2 or 3 years time class C goods will no longer be allowed to be sold.

MSP – I think your right and nearly all porducts try to be as efficient as possible as it is a major selling point.
The problem is that people think they are being “green” by replacing old tech with new more efficient tech before the end of the orignal items life. Is it not the actual production of goods that uses a significant percentage of the total power consumption over the products lifetime?

My Mrs has an old 10yr old Yaris which is used 90% of the time for a 6 mile drive to work. I can replace it with a new Nissan Leaf or similar and reduce emissions etc but I don’t think that would be more energy efficent than running the Yaris into the ground and then replacing it in 5 – 10yrs time. We’ve all seen the photos of Japanese landfill sites with piles of electronics binned after a couple of years.

Orbital solar farms beaming power down to earth by microwave. Has multiple advantages

1) Restarts space industry. Spaceships are cool
2) The only NIMBYs live on the International Space Station, but we don’t need to worry about them because in space nobody can hear you scream
3) There’s little chance of it going wrong, but when it does, it’ll take the form of uncontrolled microwave beams sweeping across the surface of earth turning everything they touch into lava. Which is AWESOME.
4) We’re going to be overrun by godzillas as a result of nuclear disasters, and the Bagger 288 can’t be everywhere- this way we can cook them from orbit (full power for 4 minutes, wait a minute, then another 3 minutes) thus solving food shortages as well.

Answering an old question on molten salt. Stable fuel carrier but at the end of life the chemical separation of fuel from waste can be done with water instead of 12m nitric acid. The chemical issues make as much of a problem for reprocessing as the Nuclear. This explanation was from working with some guys who were developing the tech. Hit a few hurdles and not sure where it is now.

now we are talking Northwind

they could also be reversed to provide a defense against attacking aliens/ asteroids

Can’t see anyone mentioning Poo power yet.

I mean, what do you lot produce a lot of? That’s right, shit!
It’s valuable stuff too.
Cockneys produce more shit than anyone else which is why the biggest poo to power (or CHP as it’s known in the industry) plant is there.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/sewage-plant-will-supply-electricity-1550410.html

8MW from one treatment works and there’s thousands of them around the country. Although that’s old news, Davyhulme in Manchester (next to the Trafford centre), turns Manc’s poo into roughly the same amount of power as well as producing gas that can be used to heat people’s homes.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5545961/Human-sewage-to-power-thousands-of-homes.html

I agree, reduce and a mix of conventional and home generated. I’d like to see a lot more power produced at or near homes using whatever method is handy.

For example a farmer friend suggested running water pipes through a nearby midden (it gets REALLY hot in the centre of one of those) and into the central heating system. Brilliant! Free heat from a by-product of sheep and cattle farming. Works with any kind of sh!t – there are loads of livery stables round here.

If you’re near a little stream, maybe a water wheel; if you’ve got a roof – some tiles/old radiators painted black; if it’s windy, a wind turbine; if you’ve got room perhaps grow a willow coppice.

People could have a look at what’s around them. I think a major problem is that people polarise: as soon as you suggest greener energy or reducing consumption they panic and think; Boring! Cold! Old fashioned! Dreadful haircuts and awful jumpers!. But of course it doesn’t have to be like that.

If I suggest cycling, people always say “Oh but it gets cold/wet etc”. I don’t mean struggle home in the teeth of a gale on your bike trying to balance a settee and the week’s shopping. I mean if you were popping out for milk or to the local pub/restaurant you could quite easily do that by bike rather than car. Mix ‘n’ match.

Blott on the Landscape – I knew it rang a bell – it’s a book by Tom Sharpe

Samuri

I mentioned the after effects of a good curry as power but there was no reaction. Everyone should have their own plop powered gas generator, poo is the future.