[HN Gopher] Dogger Bank's giant turbines herald a wind of change...
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Dogger Bank's giant turbines herald a wind of change in UK industry
Author : GordonS
Score : 80 points
Date : 2021-01-04 11:42 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| DrBazza wrote:
| The number of days where it makes no little or no contribution to
| the UK grid surprises me: https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind
|
| In the press, at least, it seems that the UK is consolidating on
| wind as the 'green solution', when it's clear the UK needs a much
| more mixed solution.
|
| Doggerland is interesting purely for the bones and artefacts that
| are dredged up (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland#Discover
| y_and_inves...).
|
| It's a shame the article didn't mention anything about that.
| detritus wrote:
| Off-topic:
|
| Why on Earth does gridwatch.co.uk not work in Firefox?!
|
| Other sites that do: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ (this
| is the one I've seen linked more often over the years)
| http://grid.iamkate.com/
| aries1980 wrote:
| Afaik green energy has never meant to provide standalone, at
| least until the surplus energy generated at daily peaks can be
| reasonably stored for days.
|
| This paper is a bit dated, but explains well some of the
| concerns:
| http://www.templar.co.uk/downloads/Renewable%20Energy%20Limi...
| qayxc wrote:
| Careful there buddy!
|
| Take a look at the actual time when wind power contributed
| little or nothing. It's mostly night hours between 23:00 and
| 5:00.
|
| Contrary to conventional power sources, wind power can be
| regulated basically "on-the-spot" by turning turbines on and
| off.
|
| Living next to a small on-shore wind farm, I can tell you from
| first hand observation that most of the time turbines are
| turned off deliberately, because production simply exceeds
| demand.
|
| A chart like the one you've linked to doesn't tell the whole
| story and can be very misleading indeed. You'd need to plot the
| actual load on the grid versus production to get a better
| picture.
| saargrin wrote:
| wouldnt the turbines be safer if they are spinning instead of
| being parked?
|
| you could just disengage the dynamo..
| rsynnott wrote:
| That's how you get this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u14tBwO5QVQ
|
| Ultimately, the energy has to go _somewhere_, if it's
| spinning.
| jacquesm wrote:
| No. A parked turbine has its blades furled and is locked in
| place. A freely spinning but disengaged turbine is _super_
| dangerous because there is nothing to stop it from
| overspeeding and that can happen quite quickly with the
| right gust of wind. So you always want to have drag on a
| spinning turbine.
| qayxc wrote:
| No, that'd be a bad idea.
|
| Keep in mind that the rotors and mechanical parts are
| subject to wear and tear.
|
| A rotor that's feathered experiences less mechanical stress
| and thus lasts longer. Same goes for any other moving
| parts.
|
| It's a measure to increase the lifetime and reduce the risk
| of fires (e.g. from spinning too fast due to lack of
| mechanical load from the generator).
| mkingston wrote:
| I'm no expert, but I guess if you disengage the load the
| turbine blades would accelerate until the internal heat
| losses to friction matched the energy input from the wind.
| In other words, they'd spin very quickly, probably far in
| excess of their design speed, meaning at best that they
| would wear out much more quickly, or I guess more likely
| RUD (rapid unscheduled disassembly), causing them to be
| considerably more dangerous.
| aries1980 wrote:
| There were couple of days recently when almost zero energy
| was generated by wind:
| https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/blackouts-fear-forces-
| pow... (an excerpt without being paywalled:
| https://www.thegwpf.com/britain-faces-green-energy-
| disaster-...)
| aries1980 wrote:
| Posting a link from a 240-year-old Western medium that was
| downvoted to -3 from the default 1 was the last time I
| wasted my time on commenting a HN post.
| qayxc wrote:
| The excerpt speaks for the "quality" of this kind of
| journalism: headline says
|
| > "Britain faces green energy disaster as lack of wind
| triggers new blackout warning"
|
| Actual quote says:
|
| > National Grid said the margin notice "highlights that we
| would like a greater safety cushion between power demand
| and available supply" but "does not signal that blackouts
| are imminent".
|
| In short: yes, regenerative or "green" energy requires a
| different approach, including overprovisioning, short term
| storage, and stand-by power stations (e.g. natural gas-
| powered ones) in order to work reliably.
|
| That's not news, however, that's a well known fact. Plus
| both wind and solar can be predicted fairly well over the
| short term and a more intelligent grid could be used to
| adjust demand accordingly to also help with this.
|
| It's an issue, sure, but not a show-stopper.
| aries1980 wrote:
| > The excerpt speaks for the "quality" of this kind of
| journalism: headline says
|
| I agree, just I couldn't find a better link to the
| National Grid announcement.
| tyho wrote:
| Why then, would they shut down a wind turbine rather than a
| gas turbine. There was no point in the last year where gas
| turbines were not supplying power.
|
| If what you say is true, then the grid is being run in a more
| carbon intensive way than necessary. Why would this be?
| peterbraden wrote:
| Because gas and other fossil fuels are inelastic - it's
| expensive to turn them off or on, and it can't be done
| rapidly. The fact that wind can be turned on or off at will
| means they can be used to balance demand spikes.
| throwaway2245 wrote:
| My guess: When the spot price of electricity turns negative
| (or low enough that is not covering costs), a wind turbine
| can put on the brakes immediately, whereas a gas turbine
| might prefer to accept some loss.
| mrow84 wrote:
| Because, as qayxc intimated with "Contrary to conventional
| power sources", it is more expensive to turn gas turbines
| off and on again than it is wind turbines. Price will
| dictate action in a marketplace, so sufficient incentives
| need to be introduced to motivate greener supply.
| diroussel wrote:
| This is correct. And the costs are built into the
| contract. Wind and hydro dams are very easy to control.
| Gas is quite easy to control. Coal costs more to start
| and stop, but nuclear nearly changes in output over the
| course of a week. Nuclear is tuned to output the base
| load, the level below which demand never drops. Then the
| other sources are layered on top.
|
| For the situations where all power sources are at max
| output and there is still not enough power, then the UK
| will pull power from France. This typically happens when
| East Enders (TV Soap Opera) finished and millions of
| people turn on the kettle (high powered water heaters of
| 2 or 3 kW).
| iridium_core wrote:
| This is why electric cars needs smart charging - plug it in
| when you get home, and expect for it to be charged by the
| time you need to go to work - but the actual charging hours
| should be linked to the grid in order to manage overall
| demand.
|
| Its a shame that this regulation and UI environment is not
| already ready, since these vehicles are already being mass-
| manufactured.
| tsherr wrote:
| Isn't it a bad idea to build these in a corrosive environment
| like the ocean? Is there a reason, other than NIMBY to put them
| in the ocean?
| weego wrote:
| Perhaps somewhere during the planning, design, development and
| testing phases they considered this issue and mitigated it?
| senorjazz wrote:
| you'd think but...
| GordonS wrote:
| Some oil and gas related gear stays subsea for 20 years before
| it's pulled up, so presumably similar alloys/paints/techniques
| are being used.
|
| Source: I've worked, within IT, in the oil and gas sector for
| many years.
| nicoburns wrote:
| It's possible to build bigger turbines at sea, which are more
| efficient. The limitation on land is transporting the blades
| which often requires roads to be modified.
| Mauricebranagh wrote:
| And wind is steadier out a sea plus there is a Nimby aspect
| in the UK.
| diroussel wrote:
| It's not so much "not in my back yard" as there is no back
| yard big enough. The article says the new digger bank wind
| farm will be as big as Yorkshire, which is really very big
| (in UK terms)
| PLenz wrote:
| More consistent wind due to a lack of elevated land to slow it
| down via friction.
| gmac wrote:
| Especially in a geographically pretty small country like the
| UK, NIMBY (or indeed anyone else's back yard) may be a
| perfectly valid argument. These things are big and somewhat
| noisy.
| zaroth wrote:
| You also can't live or work anywhere that would be hit by the
| strobing shadow cast by the blades.
| jdeibele wrote:
| Somebody posted a link to the YouTube video that showed a
| Dutch turbine exploding. In the description it said pieces
| went 500 meters. So there probably needs to be a physical
| safety zone of 1km or more, not that turbines seem to
| explode very often.
|
| Also noise has been mentioned by some people as a
| consideration. https://www.ramblingsdc.net/wtnoise.html has
| an interesting page on it (and a 2012 vibe).
| rsynnott wrote:
| There's a huge amount of experience in this area from oil and
| gas infrastructure; there've been large-scale offshore rigs in
| the North Sea since the 60s.
| sefrost wrote:
| As I understand it this technology has developed because the
| government (David Cameron) essentially banned onshore wind by
| removing the subsidies for it.
|
| They changed the rules back again last year though [1].
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/02/uk-
| governme...
| lizknope wrote:
| I've read that the wind is more consistent in the ocean.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Not just more consistent, but also usually stronger.
| Currently, for example, wind speeds over the North Sea and
| the Baltic are stronger than over the adjacent land, and the
| change at the coastline is quite striking (I'm assuming that
| the model behind this map is reasonably accurate in that
| regard.)
|
| https://www.windy.com/53.744/-0.339?53.372,-0.339,8
| japanuspus wrote:
| Corrosion on the submerged parts is quite simple to mitigate
| with sacrificial as also used on ships. The hard part is the
| splash zone which is only intermittently submerged.
| nicktelford wrote:
| As other posters have mentioned, offshore is significantly more
| economical for a number of reasons (stronger, more consistent
| wind; large tracts of available area for large-scale farms; the
| capability to build turbines much taller where they can access
| stronger winds) - so instead I'll mention another problem
| facing offshore turbines other than corrosion: the air.
|
| It turns out that offshore, the air contains a lot of minerals
| and water droplets that make it much more abrasive than the air
| over land. This is a particular problem for turbine blades, as
| their leading edge is moving through the air at a significant
| speed: enough to gradually ablate away the leading edge
| material! Consequently, offshore turbine blades need to be
| replaced more often than onshore turbine blades. This is one of
| the reasons that larger turbines are more economical: fewer
| larger turbines mean fewer, larger blades that need to be
| periodically replaced.
| pmuk wrote:
| They hope to increase offshore wind power threefold to 40GW by
| 2030 creating 27,000 new jobs.... that's 1MW of energy output per
| job!
| pjc50 wrote:
| Technology as force multiplier. If your job was generating
| energy directly, you'd struggle to manage more than 100W
| continuous and quickly get bored of pedalling.
| jbj wrote:
| there is also a plan for an artificial island:
| https://energinet.dk/Om-nyheder/Nyheder/2017/04/25/Kampe-kun...
| robin_reala wrote:
| Doggerland (where Dogger Bank is situated) is a pretty intriguing
| place and worth reading up on. But the general gist is that the
| UK was landbridged to the Netherlands and Denmark up until
| relatively recently (10,000BC) when a glacial lake gave way and
| submerged the area.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
| pestatije wrote:
| The cool thing about this is trawlers in the area have
| occasionally hauled man-made specimens from the era
| (~10,000BC), meaning there could be archaeological remains just
| there underwater.
| Someone wrote:
| One can also find animal remains there
| (https://thenaturalhistorian.com/2014/02/04/fishing-for-
| fossi...)
|
| You can even buy them (https://www.northseafossils.com/). A
| mammoth molar is a few hundred $. Prices go up for rarer
| parts ($19,999 for a largely complete skull, for example http
| s://www.northseafossils.com/component/jshopping/product/...)
| tda wrote:
| The article is about the 13MW Haliade-X tubine, but on part of
| the Doggerbank (Sofia wind park) an even larger 14MW Siemens
| Gamesa turbine will be installed. As short as maybe 5 years ago
| >10MW turbines were thought of as unlikely in the near time, and
| look where we are now. And we still haven't hit any hard limits,
| meaning there is still room to grow! And as the turbines grow, so
| do the foundations. Most turbines are installed on a single steel
| tube that is driven into the ground, a monopile. A single one can
| be 100m long, 10m in diameter and weigh 2000 tons!
| kitd wrote:
| I don't have a link but IIRC a single rotation of the largest
| turbines can generate enough electricity to supply an average
| home for a day.
|
| edit: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/worlds-
| largest-w...
| jonsen wrote:
| Take a 3.6MW generator.
|
| That is 3.6MWh per hour.
|
| As we have 3600 seconds per hour, it's 1kWh per second.
|
| Say rotation is one per second, it's 1 kWh per rotation for a
| 3.6MW generator.
|
| A few kilowatthours per day for an average home?
| ndonnellan wrote:
| I doubt the rotation speed is 1/s, that would imply
| pi*220m/s at the tips or 2488 km/hour! Based on animations,
| it looks more like 1 rotation per 20 or 30 seconds.
| 20-30kWh seems very reasonable for a house's consumption.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| The average electricity consumption of a UK home is 8 to 10
| kWh per day (or 330-400 W if you will).
| yread wrote:
| I live in an appartment (still counts as a home) and
| consumed 6.6 kWh/day on average. The very large turbines
| don't do 1 rotation per second (wiki [0] says 5-20 rpm).
| So, totally doable with a 14MW wind turbine
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design
| saargrin wrote:
| whats the expected lifetime on one of those? does it grow or
| diminish with size,i.e. do bigger ones last longer?
|
| it does seem that maintenance on the bigger ones is more
| complicated and requires more sophisticated gear ,not to
| mention difficulties of operating in North Sea
| nicktelford wrote:
| Yes, but you need fewer of them for the same generating
| capacity.
|
| So instead of having to maintain 10 1.4MW turbines, you only
| need to maintain 1 14MW turbine.
| itsnot2020 wrote:
| Like in Palm Springs where they are replacing 460 wind
| turbines with 11 for the same energy production.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Strike price: PS40/MWh or in consumer units 4p/kWh.
| https://www.offshorewind.biz/2019/09/20/uk-offshore-wind-str...
|
| Strike prices are a form of option or insurance which guarantees
| income for the producer over the long term regardless of market
| prices. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-
| dif...
|
| By comparison, when Hinckley Point C is finished, it will have a
| strike price of PS92.50. And the solar panels I have on my roof
| are paying me 14p/kWH in subsides because they were build under
| the old regime.
| [deleted]
| jack_riminton wrote:
| I hope the blades are able to be recycled
|
| Apparently GE have announced that they can do this now but
| there's no specific mention of it on the UK ones
| https://www.utilitydive.com/news/ge-announces-first-us-wind-...
|
| Previously they just had to bury them:
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-02-05/wind-turb...
| nradov wrote:
| Discarded turbine blades are basically inert and won't give off
| any methane so there's really nothing wrong with burying them
| in a landfill.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Just because something is acceptable doesn't mean its
| preferable
|
| Recycling is clearly the preferable option
| vikramkr wrote:
| Why? Recycling it could be very energy intensive. Recycling
| is only preferable in particular circumstances, and until
| you have a specific recycling process to evaluate, you
| can't make general conclusions about the
| preferability/environmental superiority of recycling vs
| landfill disposal
| pjc50 wrote:
| The main problem with a hundred meter long blade is going to
| be finding somewhere to put it. Maybe they'll end up as
| artificial reefs or polders. Or maybe in the intervening 20+
| years somebody will develop a technique for recycling glass-
| epoxy composites.
| probablypower wrote:
| >there's really nothing wrong with burying them in a landfill
|
| And with one comment, 100 circular economists screamed out in
| pain.
| maelito wrote:
| > each one can generate enough electricity to power 16,000 homes,
| at less than the average price of electricity in the wholesale
| energy market.
|
| This is the kind of wishes presented as facts that discredite
| almost all articles about new renewables.
|
| They don't say if this 16k figure is peak charge, they don't say
| how these homes are powered when the wind is down, if this price
| includes all costs (transport, subventions, storage...), etc.
|
| It gives the impression that electricity works like fuel : you
| just extract it, then use it when you want.
| bambataa wrote:
| They don't write "this nuclear power station powers X homes,
| apart from the 20% of the time when it's tripped off", so at
| least they're consistent.
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