[HN Gopher] The world's biggest offshore wind farm, Hornsea 2, g...
___________________________________________________________________
The world's biggest offshore wind farm, Hornsea 2, generates first
power
Author : pmlnr
Score : 187 points
Date : 2021-12-29 12:14 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (orsted.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (orsted.com)
| eggy wrote:
| Some of my fellow rope access technicians make their living on
| these things. They are employed full time going all over and
| patching blades damaged from normal wear and errant objects. The
| anecdote is that the engineers designed the blades to handle bird
| strikes and large objects, but didn't factor in the higher
| velocities as you go out from the hub being worn down by fine
| particulate like you get with sandblasting. Cool videos, but not
| for me. I do my ropework on buildings, towers, machinery, and
| theater. Do the costs below factor this in? I believe each blade
| costs a small fortune, but I am sure that is relative to other
| forms energy, so not so bad. BTW, I am a fan of nuclear since the
| 1980s, and it seems the costs both initial, during, and
| decommissioning are heavily hit by time and cost burdens due to
| safety regulations that didn't evolve with the newer reactor
| designs. I especially like the idea of 'backyard' reactors
| powering a house or block vs. central power distribution units.
| gatestone wrote:
| If Hornsea 2 really produces anywhere near the nominal 1,4 MW and
| was built in three years, that is remarkable.
|
| The Olkiluoto 3 nuclear plant here in Finland (1,6 MW) was just
| started. The construction took 20 years.
|
| The price seems to be in the same ballpark, 5000 million euro was
| quoted for Hornsea 1, and 9000 million for Olkiluoto 3?
| eugene-d wrote:
| You mean GW? I'm confused
| spenrose wrote:
| 1. He does mean GW
|
| 2. Orsted will average around 60% of nameplate, with wide but
| predictable variance[1]
|
| 3. Nuclear averages 90% of nameplate, with a mix of planned
| and sudden large outages [op. cit.]
|
| 4. Nuclear has higher running costs but longer capital
| lifetime
|
| 5. We need to decarbonize aggressively on multiple
| timescales: get solar+storage (quickest),
| wind+storage(reasonably quick), nuclear (s-l-o-w), and
| advanced geothermal (in development; s-l-o-w then maybe
| reasonably quick) all deployed.
|
| 6. The broad path forward for industrialized societies is
| solar everywhere, TWh of hour-scale storage, TW of wind, and
| ~25% of electricity provided by "clean firm": some
| combination of nuclear, geothermal, H2, and fossil gas with
| CCS.
|
| 7. Electricity consumption will grow faster than the economy
| in industrialized societies, and as fast as the economy in
| the currently underserved global south (~3B people). Roughly
| 10TW today, 20TW in 2040, who knows after that.
|
| [1] https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/hornsea-
| spawns-...
| thehappypm wrote:
| What about operating costs and decommissioning costs? I imagine
| that it takes a pretty substantial workforce to run a nuclear
| plant, and decommissioning is a pain, but not too sure about
| wind.
| eggfriedrice wrote:
| I like the photo showing the blades labelled A, B and C. Makes it
| look like IKEA-style assembly, but with a massive Allen key.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Renewables and electrification are the primary solution to the
| climate change problem.
|
| This book contains a very practical roadmap on how we can do this
| quickly, cheaply and practically:
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify
|
| In this thread from yesterday I answer most of the standard
| objections: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29721417
|
| P.S. The people agreeing with me mostly got upvoted and the
| people disagreeing mostly got downvoted, so read from the bottom
| if you want to see answers to objections.
| jlarocco wrote:
| I really have no idea if this is possible, but is there any
| possibility that with enough wind turbines, we might discover a
| down side to them?
|
| Each wind turbine essentially transfers power out of the wind
| and into our electric grid, right? Is it possible we could
| build enough turbines for that to be a problem?
| nootropicat wrote:
| Yes, there are significant downsides: https://acp.copernicus.
| org/articles/10/2053/2010/acp-10-2053...
|
| The short of it is that since wind exists because of
| temperature differentials, each wind farm increases them.
|
| >Using wind turbines to meet 10% or more of global energy
| demand in 2100, could cause surface warming exceeding 1 degC
| over land installations
| trebligdivad wrote:
| The UK is doing pretty well today - 39%/13GW Wind energy at the
| moment which is great; but we have whole months when we'll have
| near to nothing when there is very little wind (e.g. less than
| 2GW for a long time), when that happens in the winter when
| we've not got much Solar, I'm not seeing how Renewables keep us
| going - maybe if some of the tidal systems get working. Energy
| storage works great for daily peak/troughs - but not for weeks.
| So, at the moment I'm assuming we're going to need more nukes
| to get rid of gas. Roll on Fusion.
| aembleton wrote:
| It is one of the reasons for the new undersea cable to
| Norway. When we have excess wind then we can pump water up a
| mountain there, and when we don't the we can release it and
| recapture some of that energy.
|
| Problem is, that is currently only 1.4GW of capacity. We'll
| need a whole lot more of it to get fully off gas or nuclear.
| gwright wrote:
| > Renewables and electrification are the primary solution to
| the climate change problem
|
| Not until grid-scale energy storage is widely available and
| affordable.
| hannob wrote:
| This is really thinking it backwards. You don't build the
| storage before you have the renewables to store. And almost
| no country is at a point where they need storage in large
| amounts (as long as that's an option it's cheaper to add
| flexibility by exchanging with neighboring countries).
|
| E.g. hydrogen electrolyseurs + gas plants that can use H2
| exist and aren't particularly challenging. The reason you
| don't see that yet is that we don't have the huge amounts of
| renewables that would need this infrastructure yet.
| 7952 wrote:
| The UK pipeline for battery storage is over 20GW.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| One might reasonably consider "grid-scale energy storage" to
| be an implicit part of "renewables and electrification".
| gwright wrote:
| I don't think that is reasonable as an interpretation
| because grid-scale energy storage doesn't yet exist.
|
| An assertion that "renewables and electrification" solves
| our energy problems is just circular reasoning. It requires
| a non-existent technology (grid-scale long-term energy
| storage) and so doesn't fall into the category of
| "solution" and more into the category of "speculation".
| pydry wrote:
| What exactly are these 2.2GW of battery installations in
| California then?
|
| https://www.energystoragejournal.com/southern-california-
| edi...
|
| Or the 1GW they already have?
| cinntaile wrote:
| What do you mean when you say grid-scale energy storage
| doesn't exist? Is this different from utility-scale which
| has existed for many years?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| We certainly do have grid-scale _technology_.
|
| Whether it can be, or is, or will be deployed is another
| question.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Yup, that's in the book I linked.
|
| A lot less storage is needed than most people think. We only
| need about 3 hours worth of storage. That's a lot, but it's
| feasible.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
| gwright wrote:
| > We only need about 3 hours worth of storage
|
| This doesn't align with the analysis that I've seen. For
| example in this post
| (https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/the-disastrous-
| economics...) the analysis shows that California would have
| to spend about $5 trillion on battery storage to have a
| solar+wind+battery grid.
|
| If the book you reference was accurate we would be seeing
| headlines about power companies bragging about these new
| grid arrangements but instead I just see headlines about
| how India an China are moving ahead with enormous amounts
| of coal power plants, rapidly increasing energy costs where
| intermittent power generation is a significant fraction of
| power capacity (i.e. Germany), and power outages when base
| load generating capacity isn't sufficient to keep the
| lights on when the sun sets and the wind dies.
| cinntaile wrote:
| > Due to seasonality of the availability of the wind and
| sun, most locations require a month or more of battery
| capacityto get a fully-wind/solar system through a year.
|
| Yeah if their assumptions include a month or more then
| you can end up with an astronomically big sum. Also you
| don't need batteries for all your energy storage and they
| use todays battery prices to come up with that number.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Is there even enough lithium on earth for global grid
| storage, nevermind electric vehicles?
| fukpaywalls2 wrote:
| stationary batteries do not need to be from lithium.
| please search for iron or rust batteries.
| RobertoG wrote:
| There is a good chance that batteries for grid storage
| will be from different technologies than lithium.
|
| For instance:
|
| https://ambri.com/
| thomasmg wrote:
| Yes. Worst case, lithium can be extracted from seawater:
| https://electrek.co/2021/06/04/scientists-have-cost-
| effectiv... - but it's currently cheaper to get it from
| somewhere else. And lithium can be recycled. In the near
| future, I think most cars will use LFP batteries.
| gwright wrote:
| That article summary says:
|
| > Yet even in systems which meet >90% of demand, hundreds
| of hours of unmet demand may occur annually.
|
| and
|
| > satisfy countries' electricity demand in 72-91% of hours
| (83-94% by adding 12 h of storage).
|
| So not 3 hours and still significant number of days without
| power.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That's without overbuild. Look at the graphs at the back,
| the ones with 3x overbuild and 3 hours of storage. Small
| countries still have unmet demand, but Russia, US and
| Canada do not.
| pfdietz wrote:
| You back that up with combustion turbines burning some
| renewably-sourced fuel.
|
| Capital cost of a simple cycle combustion turbine power
| plant: $500/kW Capital cost of a nuclear power plant:
| $10,000/kW
|
| So, one can have this backup sitting there ready to go
| for just 5% of the cost of an all nuclear grid. You do
| need the fuel, but if it's only used a few hundred hours
| per year the fuel cost will be minor.
| ftth_finland wrote:
| Oh, please. Up north, like here in Finland, you'd be hard
| pressed to get by with 3 _months_ of storage.
| edhelas wrote:
| https://app.electricitymap.org/zone/DE
|
| Germany: 2x the French nuclear capacity in wind and solar +
| coal and gas (edited): 398gCO2eq/kWh
|
| France: nuclear + a bit of hydro and renewables: 46gCO2eq/kWh
| c0balt wrote:
| The thing is that coal+gas ist still a massive driver for
| German electricity generation. Goal is to get coal off the
| grid until 2035 but has to be seen how they actually handle
| this has to be seen.
|
| The nuclear part in both countries also face the problem of
| long term storage that isn't solved by either one of the
| countries.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Where do you count the coal?
| edhelas wrote:
| Sorry, I didn't put it in the example. You have all the
| numbers in real-time on the link.
|
| My point was more to show that even you have a huge
| quantity of renewable, that doesn't means that is the
| correct path to go CO2 wise. Except if you accept that your
| society adapt itself to a non planned and highly variable
| electricity production.
| gostsamo wrote:
| Partial data is equal to false data when you misrepresent
| it like that. I'm also pro nuclear power, but coal and
| gas are too big factor to ignore.
| edhelas wrote:
| Just edited it ;)
| teekert wrote:
| Germany should have kept their nuclear power plants just a
| bit longer, just to get through the transition. Closing them
| all as fast as they did is just difficult to defend.
| edhelas wrote:
| Tell that to Belgium. They are planning to close down all
| their nuclear plants right now. And replace them with gas.
| jnurmine wrote:
| According to BBC: "The country will not turn its back on
| nuclear technology completely as part of the compromise
| deal, with 100 million euros ($113m; PS84m) to be
| invested into research including on smaller, modular
| nuclear energy plants."
| teekert wrote:
| Those LNG lobbyist from the US (or should I say neo
| economic-hitmen) are really worth their money. Would be
| shame if it backfired and the EU turned to Russia. Gas
| prices are through the roof, I really hope our
| politicians are going to think "EU first" for a change.
|
| * Keep the nuclear plants open until we transition fully
| to renewables. In the meantime:
|
| * Get LNG from the US or natural gas from the Russians
| depending on market prices. (Ignore those threats/boycots
| from the US wrt Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, show some
| cojones)
|
| How hard could it be?
| edhelas wrote:
| There is no such things as "100% renewable". The only
| countries that can do that already have and is because
| they have a lot of hydro-power or other controllable way
| of producing energy without emitting CO2 (Iceland,
| Finland...).
|
| If you don't have way to produce in a stable matter, NOW
| (not in 20 years when we might have the tech to store a
| crazy amount of electricity across the months) your
| electricity you have to import it or burn what you have
| in your country. France choose to import uranium.
|
| Or we go 100% renewable, but we need to start discussing
| about a society where electricity is not 24/7 available
| for a major part of the population.
| bjourne wrote:
| Finland doesn't have a lot of hydro power. Most of its
| power comes from imports, nuclear and thermal power. Your
| claim that 100% renewable cannot guarantee electricity
| 24/7 to everyone is contradicted by countless reports.
| edhelas wrote:
| I'd be curious to see those reports :)
| bjourne wrote:
| "Despite some debate, most experts agreed that 100
| percent renewable energy was feasible. Is it economically
| or politically feasible - that's a very different
| question." https://www.sciencealert.com/these-climate-
| experts-say-100-r... Also see the links posted by
| bryanlarsen.
| edhelas wrote:
| > "The Earth receives 23000 TW of solar energy, while the
| global energy consumption is 16 TW. Therefore, [100
| percent renewable energy] could be possible even if we
| capture only 0.07 percent of the solar energy" says
| Professor Xiao Yu Wu, an energy expert from MIT.
|
| Sure, doesn't solve the night issue. Having energy is
| something, having a stable production from a very diffuse
| and non stable one (day/night) is something else.
|
| > Iceland power near 100 percent of its electricity from
| renewable energy, using their abundant geothermal and
| hydro supplies. Renewable energy can also dominate
| electricity needs for more populous countries too.
|
| So geothermal and hydro.
|
| > About 80 percent of Brazil's electricity needs for its
| 209million people come from renewable sources, biomass
| and hydro mostly. On average, however, renewables power
| ~29 percent of electricity around the world. So can
| renewables reach 100 percent for populous countries?
|
| So biomass and hydro.
|
| > He argues that *there is a heavy reliance on hydro and
| biomass sources* - while most countries don't have access
| to these, so would be reliant on sources like solar,
| wind, and storage. In those circumstances, it's highly
| unlikely for renewables to power 100 percent of the
| electricity supply he says.
|
| Well thanks, the article itself is making the point I
| want to make.
| bjourne wrote:
| The article claims that "most experts agreed that 100
| percent renewable energy was feasible", yet you decide to
| quote one of the contrarian experts. Why? In either case,
| I have satisfied your curiosity; the article links to a
| number of reports claiming that 100% renewable
| electricity is possible.
| pfdietz wrote:
| The Earth actually received 100,000 TW of solar energy.
| The 23,000 must be that fraction that hits land?
| trenchgun wrote:
| We do have quite a bunch of hydro, actually.
|
| Electricity consumed by source 2020: Nuclear 28%
| Electricity by combined heat & power production from
| central heating & industry and other thermal 25% (about
| 50% split bioenergy vs fossils) Hydro 19% Import 18% Wind
| 10%
|
| Altogether electricity production is 52% from renewables.
|
| Source: https://www.stat.fi/til/salatuo/2020/salatuo_2020
| _2021-11-02... And: https://www.motiva.fi/ratkaisut/energ
| iankaytto_suomessa/sahk...
| pyrale wrote:
| > Those LNG lobbyist from the US (or should I say neo
| economic-hitmen) are really worth their money.
|
| They aren't the main cause here. Environmental parties in
| Europe have historically been built from anti-nuclear
| groups, and their involvement against commercial nuclear
| energy is ancient.
| AlexanderDhoore wrote:
| This is the sad truth. The green party in
| Flanders/Belgium is pushing hard to close our last
| nuclear plants. How they can rationalize replacing them
| with Gas is beyond me. They are running solely on
| ideology at this point.
| cinntaile wrote:
| The rationale is that this is a temporary measure,
| cheaper than building new nuclear plants, while the
| renewable buildout continues. It's likely true, but I
| doubt it's cheaper than running the current nuclear
| powerplants for longer than originally intended. I
| haven't looked at the numbers and the assumptions so I
| could be wrong in my assumption.
| Retric wrote:
| First that's an instantaneous number not any sort of long
| term average.
|
| More importantly "Capacity" isn't a useful metric for
| comparison when nuclear costs are an order of magnitude
| higher for capacity. Even with a 2x increased capacity factor
| nuclear is still several times more expensive per kWh. So in
| terms of actual investment in carbon neutral sources France
| has spent roughly 4x as much as Germany to get that
| reduction. It's an admirable sacrifice by the French people,
| but the ROI in terms of money spent vs CO2 reduction is quite
| poor.
| edhelas wrote:
| This has been debunked and proven in various papers and
| scenarios. The latest one in France is by RTE (our national
| grid management company).
| https://www.connaissancedesenergies.org/les-futurs-
| energetiq...
|
| They made 6 scenarios, from "100% renewable" (M0) to "50%
| nuclear-50% renewable in 2060" (N03). And here is there
| result cost wise: https://www.connaissancedesenergies.org/s
| ites/default/files/...
|
| N03 means we actually restart building nuclear plants and
| maintain the existing ones longer than expected. And yes
| there is 50% of renewable, because France didn't do
| anything for 20 years and it's "too late" to replace and
| extend the existing ones.
| Retric wrote:
| The wholesale price seen be RTE is post subsides. From
| their perspective nuclear is awesome, it's also awesome
| for French consumers or would be if they didn't have to
| pay taxes.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Mandatory myth busting here: there is no subsidies on
| French nuclear which in facts yields billions in profit
| ever year to the French government, but a tons of
| subsidies on its competitors (and below-the-market-price
| access to nuclear electricity for them so they can
| "freely compete" with EDF. For those interested see
| ARENH).
|
| There are compelling arguments against nuclear in France
| (namely the aging of the existing reactors and the
| industrial inability to ship new reactors because we've
| lost most of the learning curve after several decades
| without significant reactor construction) but imaginary
| subsidies ain't one.
|
| I know Retric won't change their mind, but I hope other
| readers won't buy their bullshit.
| Retric wrote:
| > no subsidies on French nuclear
|
| The most obvious French subsidy for nuclear is who pays
| for possible 500+ billion Euro nuclear accident. The
| Paris Convention and the Brussels Convention both require
| insurance for nuclear accidents, but cap liability to
| operators with the difference being made up by taxpayers.
|
| That's an easy to verify subsidy, as was the recent
| bailout for Areva S.A., I could go on but subsidies get
| convoluted. Pressure from the French government for
| people to use electric heating, well it's in support of
| the nuclear industry but not really a "subsidy" or is it?
| Let's say no.
|
| What about low interest government loans? Sure that's an
| obvious subsidy.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > The most obvious French subsidy for nuclear is who pays
| for possible 500+ billion Euro nuclear accident. The
| Paris Convention and the Brussels Convention both require
| insurance for nuclear accidents, but cap liability to
| operators with the difference being made up by taxpayers.
|
| That's stretching the meaning of the word "subsidy" quite
| a lot...
|
| > That's an easy to verify subsidy, as was the recent
| bailout for Areva S.A.
|
| Oh please tell us more it's gonna be funny because you
| obviously don't know what you're talking about.
|
| > Pressure from the French government for people to use
| electric heating, well it's in support of the nuclear
| industry but not really a "subsidy" or is it?
|
| Oh you mean the type of heating that's been FORBIDDEN in
| new building for a decade? Please be serious...
|
| > What about low interest government loans? Sure that's
| an obvious subsidy.
|
| Yes, too bad it doesn't exist. (In France, UK has some
| kind of state-guaranteed loan for Hinkley point, but
| that's not the right country and not "low interest loan"
| either).
| Retric wrote:
| The heating thing seems like an odd bit of trivia today,
| but back in 1988 French nuclear reactors had a capacity
| factor around 60% and home electric heating such as heat
| pumps was considering one way of boosting consumption
| especially at night. Things have clearly changed over
| time, but I am unaware of any current regulations banning
| new homes with electric heating.
|
| > obviously don't know what you're talking about.
|
| Please enlighten us: _European Union antitrust regulators
| approved the French government 's plan to inject 4.5
| billion euros ($4.8 billion) into embattled nuclear group
| Areva AREVA.PA, saying the rescue would not unduly
| distort competition._ www.reuters.com/article/us-areva-
| restructuring-eu-idUSKBN14U1L0
|
| PS: Hinkly is somewhat interesting as the French
| government has a major stake in the UK power plant.
| Digging into the financing gets rather interesting.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| > The heating thing seems like an odd bit of trivia
| today, but back in 1988 French nuclear reactors had a
| capacity factor around 60% and home electric heating such
| as heat pumps(sic[1]) was considering one way of boosting
| consumption especially at night.
|
| So, by your logic we were building new plants for no
| apparent reasons in the 80-90s, and to make it useful we
| decided to force people to use electric heaters to boost
| consumption. You couldn't imagine that there were no
| conspiracy to build nuclear plants for the sake of it and
| the logic actually went the other way around? After the
| oil shocks the French government decided to become more
| energetically independent. At this time most of the
| heating was provided via fuel oil boilers, so it was
| highly dependent on the international price of oil. So
| the government decided to encourage people to use
| electric heaters instead, and then built nuclear plants
| to provide the needed electricity. (the reader will note
| that this is a clear example of Brandolini's law, where
| the amount of effort needed to refute bullshit is
| significantly higher than to produce it).
|
| > Things have clearly changed over time, but I am unaware
| of any current regulations banning new homes with
| electric heating.
|
| So maybe you shouldn't talk about a country you don't
| know? "Reglementation Thermique 2012" (more commonly
| called "RT 2012") is what you're looking for. And it was
| the biggest and most disruptive construction law ever,
| and was discussed in depth for years. Anyone with a least
| a minimal awareness on the French energy issues will
| inevitably be aware of it.
|
| > Please enlighten us: European Union antitrust
| regulators approved the French government's plan to
| inject 4.5 billion euros ($4.8 billion) into embattled
| nuclear group Areva AREVA.PA, saying the rescue would not
| unduly distort competition. www.reuters.com/article/us-
| areva-restructuring-eu-idUSKBN14U1L0
|
| Thanks, this cherry picking from the first Google result
| you could find illustrate my point about you not knowing
| the topic. Do you know the difference between a
| shareholder restructuring an asset and a state bailing
| out a private company? In the first case, the shareholder
| is actually rewarded the capital investment through its
| return on equity. Since Areva's restructuring, the French
| government has already been paid back through EDF's
| dividends. (of course these dividends aren't directly the
| result of the said restructuring, which is still bearing
| fruits, but simply the result of the recurring revenue
| that EDF brings to the French government ever year).
|
| [1]: it was not heat pumps (which would be terrible for
| the job of artificially increasing consumption anyway
| because of their high yield) but plain convector, which
| where much affordable.
| Retric wrote:
| Reglementation Thermique 2012
|
| It's a little more complicated. RE 2012 arguably does
| favor gas, but it does not requires it. However RE 2020
| as of 2 days from now changes things back to electricity
| and for homes under construction is what's actually in
| effect.
|
| Sorry, if you're using outdated information but the
| industry has moved on.
| [deleted]
| pydry wrote:
| Since when does free insurance stretch the definition of
| subsidy?
|
| Clean up costs in Fukushima will total about $1 trillion.
|
| Probability of a core melt accident in 1 year or reactor
| operation is apparently 1 in 3704.
|
| Insuring for that much with zero profit margin would be
| $269 million per year per plant.
|
| That's about 1.5x-2x the cost of operating a nuclear
| plant.
|
| It's a lot of money to handwave away.
| edhelas wrote:
| RTE is pushing a lot for renewable to be deployed as well
| as more nuclear. More renewable means more grid
| deployment, so more work for them. Don't shoot the
| messenger.
| Eric_WVGG wrote:
| Alright, I've got one that I don't see on your list, it's been
| on my mind for years. What about the goldfish problem?
|
| Goldfish grow to fit their containers. Keep a little 1-inch
| goldfish in a bowl, it'll stay that size. Toss it in a koi pond
| and in no time you'll have something approaching the size of a
| housecat.
|
| People are like this. A family might be scratching by on
| $40k/year. Dad gets some windfall or promotion and is making
| $60k/year. So did he finish out the year in the same house with
| $20k in the bank? Of course not, he's paying for all the
| clothes and goods that he couldn't afford before.
|
| Ten years later he's gotten promoted to making $120k/year.
| _Now_ is there money in the bank, or are they living in a
| bigger house and driving a nicer car?
|
| This is what worries me about any climate plan that is only
| based on clean energy. If driving, for example, gets cleaner,
| do we use 50% less petroleum, or keep burning the same amount
| of petroleum on different projects? (And what about all the
| non-tracked pollution caused by tire wear?)
|
| This problem is even more stark when people talk about
| atmospheric carbon capture. If we're emitting X tons of carbon
| per year, and recapture Y tons, will we continue to emit X, or
| start emitting X + Y?
|
| None of this is reason not to pursue renewables and
| electrification, but I think it's inescapable that any "primary
| solution" has to be a reduction in consumption.
| zardo wrote:
| > Keep a little 1-inch goldfish in a bowl, it'll stay that
| size.
|
| In much the same way that keeping a puppy in a tiny kennel
| full of it's own filth will stunt it's growth.
|
| https://www.tfhmagazine.com/articles/freshwater/goldfish-
| myt...
| pjc50 wrote:
| In the context of energy, this is known as the "Jevons
| paradox": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
| jl6 wrote:
| It's a great question, but if resources are genuinely clean,
| ethical and renewable, is it a problem to consume them?
| Perhaps the question is how to determine whether the things
| we consume genuinely are clean, ethical and renewable or not.
| nicoburns wrote:
| The issue is that nothing is really cost free. Windfarms
| are better for the environment than alternatives, but they
| still have a significant impact. And that will increase if
| the best (low impact) sites get used up, and we still need
| to find space for more.
|
| I think reduction in consumption has to be part of the
| solution too.
| edhelas wrote:
| Big +1 on that one.
|
| France goal to meet Paris agreement is actually to reduce by
| ~5% per year ALL energy consumption. -5% is roughly what we
| had with 3 lockdowns in 2020. So it's basically a COVID added
| to a COVID each year, for 30 years.
|
| That's no matter what you do in your actual energy deployment
| and investment.
| oezi wrote:
| This is all fine as long as all externalities are included in
| the price of consumption. Currently burning fossils is just
| way too cheap for the damage it does.
| pyrale wrote:
| > This is all fine as long as all externalities are
| included in the price of consumption.
|
| Just like a software team scaling a product is going to
| discover new scale issues, we discover new externalities on
| a regular basis.
|
| Hoping that we can discover all externalities ahead of time
| and price them is an impossible objective.
| chr1 wrote:
| What do you think about ocean thermal energy conversion plants
| [1]. It seems to be a promissing technology that both produces
| energy during whole day, and captures carbon by increasing the
| biomass of the ocean.
|
| [1]
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_convers...
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| This project makes me proud to be a human. I wish we could put
| money into things like this only.
| the-alchemist wrote:
| Supply-side storage--batteries, etc.--is definitely part of the
| solution, but demand-side "storage" is even cheaper and better.
|
| It's summer, it's hot, you set your smart thermostat to 72. It
| gets really sunny and hot, so excess solar is being generated, so
| your smart thermostat _lowers_ the temperature to 71. Your
| _house_ is the "battery"!
|
| Cold weather, when you wanna generate heat, is more difficult to
| do demand-side, because most heat generation in the US is natural
| gas, propane, or heating oil (diesel).
|
| But for a lot of U.S., heat pumps for heat make economic sense,
| and I already see a lot of them below the Washington, DC
| longitudinal line.
|
| They'll make even more sense when lots of wind and solar come
| online.
|
| ---
|
| This kind of demand-side adjustment got a really bad rap during
| the Texas power grid failure this past year. But that was the
| _reverse_ of what I'm talking about, _lowering_ the temperature
| during excess wind/solar generation.
| divbzero wrote:
| The platform and cranes in the linked photo [1] give a sense of
| the immense size of the 8 MW wind turbines.
|
| [1]: https://via.ritzau.dk/ir-
| files/13560592/4605/6023/Hornsea%20...
| Gwypaas wrote:
| And now the largest ones are ~15 MW with capacity factors above
| 60%. Insane scale.
|
| https://www.vestas.com/en/products/offshore/V236-15MW
|
| https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind...
|
| https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-services/offshore...
| divbzero wrote:
| All of these turbines feature rotor diameters >200 m.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| Apologies for the cynism, but I wonder what big-tech firm bought
| the emission rights for this to expand their data hunger even
| further while "staying green". Here in the Netherlands we have a
| fierce discussion raging on the placement of a newly proposed
| "hyperscale" from Facebook/Meta. The datacenter would consume
| more than the power of Amsterdam as a whole, yet we have a lot of
| trouble finding the right grounds (and communal common ground) on
| where to place these enormous turbines.
|
| and off-topic:
|
| I bet that this entire windpark can be offset by disallowing
| arbitrary Javascript code to be ran in every advertisement, and
| all the wasted cycles that follow. In the same vein, I wonder how
| much CO2 a regular citizin saves per year by running an
| adblocker.
| huijzer wrote:
| > I wonder how much CO2 a regular citizin saves per year by
| running an adblocker.
|
| Compared to hauling about 1 000 kg around daily for the office
| commute and compared to sending an airplane into the air one or
| more times per year, the advertisements aren't too bad.
| hetspookjee wrote:
| Really open for any feedback and pointers on the below
| calculations:
|
| The average citizen of Chad emits 60kg CO2 per year,
| according to World In Data 2020 [1]. Of which roughly +-3%
| are current Facebook user [2]. Facebook is pushing hard on
| the "Open Internet" initiave to capitalize on this market,
| too [3]. If they succeed in doing so, and say, reaches 80%
| market penetration in Chad, I'm really curious to hear what
| percentage would be attributable to rendering javascript
| advertisements. I tried to look up some numbers but they vary
| widely and it becomes a heavy guessing game. One could argue
| to simply divide the amount of active users by the total
| power consumption:
|
| The energy consumption of Facebook has grown somewhat
| exponentially over the years, reaching 5.1 TWh in 2019. While
| there users are growing too (9% from 2018 > 2019, it seems
| there energy consumption is growing more quickly).
| Regardless, they counted a rough 2.5B active users at the end
| of 2019. Giving a rough power consumption per user over 2019
| 5.1TWh / 2.5b = 2Kwh. To put that 2 Kwh in perspective,
| according to Forbes a phone uses on average a year 2 Kwh of
| power.
|
| Looking up the average Co2 emissions per Kwh I find 475gram
| of CO2 / Kwh [6]. Adding that up gives a rough 1kg of Co2
| emissions per Facebook user.
|
| Given the extremely low emissions from Chad (DRC is even
| lower with 30kg / capita, but strongly doubting that). The
| market penetration of Facebook alone in Chad might be able to
| bump the actual emission from 60 > 61 kg, a near 2% increase
| per capita, just for Facebook. Which is a rough 30% of the
| advertisement market globally at the moment.
|
| That 1000kg vehicle hauling for a rough 1000km is equivalent
| to a year of a Chad living, too.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
|
| [2] https://www.internetworldstats.com/stats1.htm
|
| [3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/facebook-
| free-...
|
| [4] https://www.statista.com/statistics/580087/energy-use-of-
| fac...
|
| [5] https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-
| details/...
|
| [6] https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-co2-status-
| report-...
| clippablematt wrote:
| Here's a paper from a few years back with a low end estimate of
| 11MTCO2e for a year of digital advertising
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019592551...
|
| For comparison that one year is about the same as the entire
| history of ethereum, which gets a lot of criticism. Or about 4
| world cups.
|
| And a crazy 10x that on the high end of the estimates. Be
| interesting to see some new numbers on this.
| trenchgun wrote:
| Somebody in my university did their PhD thesis on that. Let me
| see if I can find it.
|
| (But the answer was yes. If I remember it correctly, 10% of all
| IT infrastructure energy consumption goes for displaying ads on
| web pages)
| trenchgun wrote:
| Found it.
|
| "The online advertising ecosystem resides in the core of the
| Internet, and it is the sole source of funding for many
| online services. Therefore, it is an essential factor in the
| analysis of the Internet's energy footprint. As a result, in
| 2016, online advertising consumed 20-282 TWh of energy. In
| the same year, the total infrastructure consumption ranged
| from 791 to 1334 TWh. With extrapolated 2016 input factor
| values without uncertainties, online advertising consumed 106
| TWh of energy and the infrastructure 1059 TWh. With the
| emission factor of 0.5656 kg CO2e/kWh, we calculated the
| carbon emissions of online advertising, and found it produces
| 60 Mt CO2e (between 12 and 159 Mt of CO2e when considering
| uncertainty). The share of fraudulent online advertising
| traffic was 13.87 Mt of CO2e emissions (between 2.65 and
| 36.78 Mt of CO2e when considering uncertainty)."
|
| The paper was: "Environmental impact assessment of online
| advertising" https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pi
| i/S019592551...
|
| It was the one of the five papers included in the authors PhD
| thesis, "Towards Sustainable Data Centers and ICT Services" h
| ttps://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/38725/i..
| .
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I remember doing some math on youtube forcing vp9 on hardware
| without acceleration was wasting as much power as tiny country.
|
| All because licensing.
| kingcharles wrote:
| 1.32 gigawatts! 1.32 GIGAWATTS!
| bjourne wrote:
| According to this article
| https://www.offshorewind.biz/2020/10/02/hornsea-two-offshore...
| construction of Hornsea 2 began in 2020 and is on track to be
| completed in 2022. That's less than three years construction
| time. Quite impressive considering the pandemic.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| And _hella_ impressive compared to any nuclear project!
| edhelas wrote:
| Nuclear is slow and massive to build indeed :)
|
| However, the few last nuclear plants in Germany produced more
| power than the 250BEUR, 20 years planned, solar-panels German
| total farms in 2020.
|
| Those plants are planned to be closed down this year and next
| year.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| 20 years ago nuclear was cheaper than solar.
|
| Today, solar is cheaper than nuclear.
|
| P.S. And a large part of the reason for that is because
| Germany and Denmark invested heavily in wind & solar while
| it didn't make economic sense. They really helped bump us
| up the manufacturing learning curve. Thanks, Denmark and
| Germany!
| edhelas wrote:
| When you're comparing cost, are you comparing the total
| system?
|
| This means backup + grid + management of intermittence?
|
| Because comparing the cost of a solar panel and a nuclear
| power-plant is like comparing apples and bananas if you
| actually want to power-up your computer 24/7.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Yes. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify
|
| Nuclear is also pretty bad at 24/7 power. It produces
| steady power, but what we really need is dispatchable
| power, to match the peaks and valleys in demand.
|
| The intermittency of renewables can be solved with
| batteries or other storage. We only need about 3 hours of
| batteries, a little bit of overbuilding and a good grid
| to handle its intermittency.
| pydry wrote:
| Yes. Grid scale batteries and solar have plunged
| precipitously in price. While solar has bottomed out,
| batteries look to fall still further.
|
| Nuclear hasnt. It currently requires pretty lavish
| subsidies to be built on top of the ones they already
| had.
|
| (this is not true in the UK, but in the UK hornsea's
| lower intermittency + batteries will likely beat out
| hinkley point C on cost even though solar + batteries
| probably couldnt with the UK's weather)
| barney54 wrote:
| But is solar + batteries cheaper than nuclear or solar +
| long duration storage cheaper than nuclear. This is the
| real question.
|
| Solar's great, but the grid has to be balanced 24/7/365.
| If we are going to electrify, will we need massive amount
| of electricity in old wind months when the sun isn't
| necessarily shining and the wind isn't necessarily
| blowing. We need a diversity of options so the grid is
| robust.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Probably yes, especially if one looks at 2030 (or later)
| when a nuclear plant whose planning started today might
| be ready.
|
| We do not need nuclear for diversity. Nuclear is utterly
| terrible at acting as a backup power source for a mostly
| renewable grid. Nuclear will either be most of the grid,
| or it will be pushed out entirely.
| gwright wrote:
| > Today, solar is cheaper than nuclear.
|
| Are you counting the generation capacity that has to
| exist to backup the solar? If not, then you are comparing
| apples to oranges.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Not exactly. A coal or gas plant is cheap up-front but
| has high operating costs. Solar is the opposite (as is
| nuclear). With Solar + backup peaked plants you do need
| to have two systems, but energy is gloriously cheap when
| the sun is shining.
| gwright wrote:
| > but energy is gloriously cheap when the sun is shining.
|
| This seems like a misunderstanding of how to evaluate
| costs. You can't selectively ignore some costs and then
| assert that the energy is "cheap". Well you can do that,
| but it is an entirely unconvincing argument/analysis.
| p2detar wrote:
| Well, afaik energy produced from wind & solar is being
| sold with higher priority on the common EU market.
|
| So Germany is making tons of cash selling their energy
| and when they close all nuclear plants, they plan to
| import energy from other EU producers. That includes
| brown energy which is cheaper.
|
| If you ask me, this makes perfect economic sense.
| mikro2nd wrote:
| I think the _real_ point is less about the cost than about
| time and budget overruns when comparing nuclear vs.
| renewable projects.
|
| I'm hard-pressed to think of a single solar or wind project
| that's run late or over budget, whereas I'd be even more
| hard pressed to come up with a nuclear build that has _not_
| run late and overbudget, and usually by large margins.
| cmarschner wrote:
| In today's news, the new German minister for the
| environment:
|
| " He does not see the consensus on the nuclear phase-out
| crumbling. "I have never heard from a politician from a
| democratic party that he is calling for the reconstruction
| of nuclear energy," said Habeck. "Then he would have to say
| that I would like to have the nuclear waste repository in
| my constituency. As soon as someone says that, I will deal
| with the subject again."
|
| https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/habeck-klimaziele-
| verfeh...
| steeve wrote:
| p50 on nuclear is 6 years, FYI
| alx__ wrote:
| If this had been done in America it would just be finishing the
| planning stage, 500 million over-budget, with a optimistic
| completion date of 2028. Likely 2032
| timthorn wrote:
| The planning application was submitted in 2015, with several
| years preparation before then.
| trembonator wrote:
| kitd wrote:
| IIRC a single turn of one of these turbines generates enough
| power for an average family house for one day.
| ykevinator2 wrote:
| This is so great.
| hourislate wrote:
| I read something recently that stated, if you take all the energy
| that is required to build a wind turbine and set it up. The cost
| includes the mining of ores, the manufacturing process, the
| transportation, setup and the maintenance costs. It can spin
| until it disintegrates and will never be net positive energy.
|
| I don't know if it's true, it could be full of shit, wish I could
| find it again.
| pfdietz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Wi...
|
| "In the scientific literature EROIs for recent wind turbines
| normally vary between 20 and 50.[11][better source needed].
| Data collected in 2018 found that the EROI of operational wind
| turbines averaged 19.8 with high variability depending on wind
| conditions and wind turbine size.[12] EROIs tend to be higher
| for recent wind turbines compared to older technology wind
| turbines. Vestas reports an EROI of 31 for its V150 model wind
| turbine.[13]"
| heurisko wrote:
| This is great news. Wind turbines make a lot of sense for the
| windy UK.
|
| The problem of energy storage when the wind isn't blowing,
| remains.
|
| The energy storage section in "Sustainable Energy without the Hot
| Air" [1] gives a good overview of how storage could work in the
| UK.
|
| What I don't think it covers, however, is creating hydrogen
| through water electrolysis, which Siemens Gamesa are looking at,
| even integrating the process within the turbines themselves. [2]
|
| The hydrogen could be stored, or used in the UK's heating system
| that currently runs mostly on natural gas. There have been some
| pilot projects introducing a hydrogen mix into the existing gas
| system. [3] Lowering dependence on natural gas would be good for
| not only the environment, but also for energy security, thinking
| about the recent issue with getting gas from Russia.
|
| Hydrogen-blend boilers are already on the market. I don't know
| how much work it would take for an 100pc hydrogen gas system. I
| hear there would be issues with the smaller hydrogen molecules
| escaping from our existing gas pipe infrastructure.
|
| [1] https://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_186.shtml
|
| [2] https://www.siemensgamesa.com/en-int/products-and-
| services/h...
|
| [3] https://www.energynetworks.org/newsroom/hydrogen-blending-
| wh...
| thehappypm wrote:
| The market might step in. If you can buy cheap batteries, buy
| cheap surplus energy, and sell at a profit to stabilize the
| grid...
| dmitri1981 wrote:
| There are better ways to use hydrogen than burning it in
| boilers. Check out the hydrogen ladder
| https://mobile.twitter.com/mliebreich/status/142690073731398...
|
| While storing electricity is very hard at grid scale at the
| moment, another approach to solve the intermittency problem is
| using interconnectors. By connecting to other grids using
| uncorrelated energy sources, we can balance energy supply and
| demand across space rather than across time with storage.
| foobiekr wrote:
| I think the interconnector approach is strategically
| infeasible for most countries.
| samwillis wrote:
| I believe the idea is that it solves two problems
| simultaneously, using excess wind when it's available and
| making our domestic gas supplies "greener".
|
| The vast majority of uk homes have gas powered central
| heating (hot water radiators), there is no good route forward
| to upgrade/replace all of this infrastructure to make it
| "green". You can't economically run a hot water central
| heating system using an electric heat pump, the required
| temperatures are too high, so you either need to rip it out
| and replace the whole system with a modern one or at least
| either replace all the radiators with underfloor heating or
| _masive_ wall mounted radiators (very expensive for the 10s
| millions of homes, this isn't just a new boiler).
|
| A hybrid hydrogen/natural gas or synthetic gas is a way to go
| green but keep the existing infrastructure either with a new
| boiler or hopefully minor component changes.
|
| So while it may not technically be "best usage" in the
| academic sense, it could be argued that it is a sensible use
| economically for the UK.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| If you have to use electricity to produce hydrogen it is
| more efficient to instead use that electricity directly for
| hot water and a heat pump for space heating. There is no
| need to 'rip it out and replace the whole system' to use a
| heat pump; an air to air heat pump as used in many
| Scandinavian homes can be fitted at much lower cost without
| disturbing the existing central heating at all.
|
| I don't understand why heat pump solutions in the UK are so
| expensive. An air to air heat pump from Samsung can be had
| for a thousand pounds and installation for another five
| hundred here in Norway; see
| https://www.elkjop.no/product/hjem-og-
| husholdning/oppvarming... for instance.
|
| This is rated for room areas up to 100 m2 so plenty enough
| for the average UK home. Buy two if you want the upstairs
| heated separately.
| pbowyer wrote:
| > I don't understand why heat pump solutions in the UK
| are so expensive. An air to air heat pump from Samsung
| can be had for a thousand pounds and installation for
| another five hundred here in Norway
|
| Hot air heating is missing in discussions in the UK. I
| don't know why; I speculate that it's because it got a
| bad reputation in the 1980s when it was fitted to new
| build houses and is perceived as ineffective. Certainly
| the conversations I've had with people all go "I ripped
| out the hot air system and replaced it with
| (conventional) hot water radiators and a gas boiler and
| the house is toasty warm". The draughty nature of UK
| housing may also be a factor.
|
| What's the situation in Norway and other countries? Is
| hot air heating widely used? In what kinds of properties
| do you use air to air heat pumps?
| zdragnar wrote:
| US single family homes are, by a large margin, primarily
| heated via the central air system (the same ductwork that
| supplies cold air in summer).
|
| My experience with both is that I prefer central air
| heat. That said, they will perform worse in a drafty
| house- air is a very poor carrier and storage medium for
| heat compared to water, so if you have a room with a
| draft away from your thermostat, it'll get colder faster;
| a radiator in the room would essentially act as a heat
| bank.
| Symbiote wrote:
| That heats one 100m2 room, doesn't it?
|
| A typical English1 house has several rooms, and is heated
| by a central boiler and a pump circulating hot water
| through radiators.
|
| Converting the house to air-based heating would require
| several such units, or else some other type of unit and
| pipes to move the air to the various rooms.
|
| 1 Used intentionally, I know electric resistive heating
| is/was more common in parts of Scotland.
| m01 wrote:
| > There is no need to 'rip it out and replace the whole
| system' to use a heat pump; an air to air heat pump as
| used in many Scandinavian homes can be fitted at much
| lower cost without disturbing the existing central
| heating at all.
|
| I understood that heat pumps work more efficiently in
| homes that are a) well insulated, and b) where the
| heating system is designed to work at lower temperatures
| (bigger radiators/underfloor heating and appropriate
| pipes). Whether or not a & b are must-haves or nice to
| have I'm not 100% sure about - I guess it depends.
|
| (see e.g. https://energysavingtrust.org.uk/advice/in-
| depth-guide-to-he... - Designing and operating your heat
| pump system)
| gilbetron wrote:
| There's lots of great research and progress on all kinds of
| energy storage solutions, my current favorite is the iron-air
| battery:
|
| https://youtu.be/Ui6wWzxCrQ8
| mattferderer wrote:
| > The problem of energy storage when the wind isn't blowing,
| remains.
|
| Any thoughts on trying to exceed average demand & sell off
| excess at lower costs to services that can be ready & waiting
| for excess lower cost electricity?
|
| To me this makes more sense than investing in storage
| resources. Obviously some storage resources would be needed &
| you couldn't only rely on a single type of generation from one
| geographical location.
| pydry wrote:
| Without hot air is pretty badly dated. I kind of wish people
| would stop referring to it.
|
| The author died before the economics of wind (and more
| recently, batteries) started making sense. In the book he
| persisted in sarcastically calling them "windmills".
| jtbayly wrote:
| Aren't they windmills? I'm not familiar with this being
| derogatory. It's all I can think to call them.
| sgt101 wrote:
| They aren't milling...
| samwillis wrote:
| True, although still worth reading albeit with that in mind.
|
| There is a project to get it updated (was on HN last month)
|
| https://climate.lifeitself.us/without-hot-air/
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29056343
| heurisko wrote:
| There are some parts of the book that are perennial, namely
| discussion of the UK's geography, which is relevant to energy
| storage.
| pydry wrote:
| Some parts are perennial but he still uses math that mixes
| in 15 year old assumptions with unchanging assumptions.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| The cheapest, most well understood way of handling "when the
| wind isn't blowing" - which is almost a red herring given how
| different weather patterns are across a grid - remains building
| more wind farms and variably pricing electricity.
| Angostura wrote:
| Not quite as much of a red herring as you might imagine, I
| don't think. There _are_ days when the wind generated power
| across the grid really _is_ quite small. Always fun to keep
| an eye on http://gridwatch.templar.co.uk
| Schiendelman wrote:
| That's because only a tiny, tiny fraction of areas with
| great generating capability have been built. The more we
| build, in more areas around the UK, the smaller the
| _proportion_ of dip is.
| pydry wrote:
| Batteries also have started to make sense due to recent
| plunges in their cost. Hawaii / California are doing this.
|
| Hydrogen makes negative sense due to _insane_ storage costs
| but gas /oil companies still like promoting the idea,
| probably due to their sunk costs in natgas investments.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Hydrogen only makes sense when you get to around 90-95%
| decarbonization of the grid.
| heurisko wrote:
| Could you post references regarding the issues you have
| raised, as it contradicts other claims below that sees
| hydrogen storage as unavoidable.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify
| algo_trader wrote:
| You have inserted this link about 10 times in the last
| 24hrs.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix
| =tr...
|
| Please stop.
|
| Also - the book, while correct, is not terribly original.
| It does not really address the more difficult segments.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I wish I could link to specific chapters. That's the
| thing about books vs articles, they tend to touch on a
| lot of subjects.
|
| > It does not really address the more difficult segments.
|
| Like what?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Much less storage is required than most people think. Battery
| storage is entirely economically feasible. Cheaper ones like
| hydro are even better.
|
| Norway & Britain just completed a new interconnector so that
| Norway can use Britain's cheap wind power and Britain can use
| Norway's cheap hydro storage.
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-26355-z
|
| https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/electrify
| pydry wrote:
| Offshore wind is also a lot less intermittent and tends to
| produce when onshore isnt (& vice versa).
|
| This wind farm was about half the cost per MWh of hinkley
| point C as opposed to onshore which is 1/4-1/3. However, the
| output is a _lot_ more stable than onshore.
| anonnyj wrote:
| Have we solved the problem of propellers breaking a lot and being
| nob recyclable yet?
| thehappypm wrote:
| Let's say your an aluminum refinery. Would you rather process
| these propellers or raw ore?
| kleton wrote:
| Are these aluminum or some fiber-reinforced composite?
| WJW wrote:
| Yes, those are both solved problems. The blades do not in fact
| "break a lot" in the first place, and manufacturers can recycle
| old blades at the end of their lifespan into materials for new
| blades. See for example
| https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/end-
| wi..., which you could easily have found with a single google
| search.
| edhelas wrote:
| > The new technology *will "be* a significant milestone
|
| > The project *aims to develop* the technology for industrial
| scale production *within three years*
|
| Still waiting for Elon Musk "next year AI will drive your
| Tesla" 2016 promise.
| pyrale wrote:
| The paper you quote is a press release from 8 months ago that
| claims to have research project that allows blade recycling.
| It's far from a mature industry ecosystem.
| magwa101 wrote:
| Tade0 wrote:
| Large wind turbines are interesting, because due to the lower
| friction from the ground winds are stronger up there so the
| capacity factor is appropriately higher.
|
| They also scale in power with the swept area, so it pays to make
| them even larger.
|
| IIRC the current state of the art is 14MW with a 60% capacity
| factor and that is not the manufacturers' last word.
|
| Exiting times ahead for wind power because while it's still
| intermittent, it gets built so much faster than nuclear.
| erk__ wrote:
| There is a few years before they get to that size, Siemens
| Gamesa have one of that size and that is not entering into
| serial production before 2024 [0]. That said the first one of
| those have just been set up this week, though not offshore but
| in Thy in Denmark [1] (Article in Danish) Siemens Gamesa and
| Vestas is in quite a competition about who can construct the
| largest windmill so it will be interesting to see where it gets
| us.
|
| [0]: https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-
| services/offshore...
|
| [1]: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/regionale/midtvest/verdens-
| stoerst...
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