6 ms·

New island in North Sea to be hub for wind turbine power to 80M Europeans

75 points by flexie 10y ago

Proven 10y ago
More of the same idiotic thinking - produce ludicrously electric energy where it's not necessary
timthelion 10y ago
Maybe they would actually be better off without having green areas on the island. Tiny islands in the middle of the sea tend to be major bird magnets, and that doesn't seem to be a good mix with wind. It looks nice on the render, but it would be probably be better to make the island surface as inhospitable to birds as possible to make sure they don't get in the habit of flying there and gettign killed by the turbines.
- foota 10y ago
  I wonder if you might be able to use a magnetic field to screw with the birds and make them not want to go there. (since birds rely on the Earth's magnetic field for navigation) Alternatively, I wonder how long it would be before the birds learned not to go there if they kept dying.
  - timthelion 10y ago
    That is an interesting thought, for such a remote area. I have no idea if it would work. I also don't know how much energy would be needed to change the magnetic feild enough. The earth is, afterall, one hellovabig magnet. Most magnets won't move a compas more than an arms length away.
    - foota 10y ago
      Conveniently, there's a huge power plant nearby ;) but fair. I read the other day that the space magnet proposed to generate a magnetic field to protect a transformed Mars' atmosphere would be "charged" and then not require active power. I don't know enough physics to know if similar is possible here.
  - stuaxo 10y ago
    Are birds more likely to die from a windmill than say electricity cables, or other structures?
    - foota 10y ago
      Birds are safe from electricity cables, since there's no voltage difference when they land on a line.
      - jonathansizz 10y ago
        They don't get electrocuted, but they still die from collisions with the lines. https://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-birds/collisions/electric-utility-lines.php https://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-birds/...
    - Maultasche 10y ago
      No. I've seen the statistics for how many birds are estimated to be killed by human-made objects. Buildings were the biggest killer of birds by far. Many millions of birds each year are killed by colliding with windows on buildings. They often don't realize the window is there. I'm guessing the bird sees through the window and doesn't realize there's a barrier or they see a reflection of the sky instead. Automobiles were also big killers of birds. Windmills were estimated to result in 0.1% of bird deaths by man-made objects or something really tiny like that. I don't understand why people freak out about birds being killed by wind turbines when vastly larger numbers are being killed by buildings and cars. Nobody is yelling about saving the birds by getting rid of buildings and cars.
      - timthelion 10y ago
        I'm not freeking out. I'm pointing something out. However, you really need to understand these statistics better. There are three types of bird mating pattern: First year breaders. These tend to be small birds who lay eggs, feed the young, teach them to fly and forget about them. First year breaders die at an enormous rate. I think that more than half don't survive the first year. But they lay a lot of eggs and if a few billion of them are eaten by cats and hit by cars it doesn't matter. Seccond year birds. These are almost as expendable as first year breaders, however, they teach their young how to find food and some cultural things as well. Far fewer of these die, but they are smarter and they don't hit windows as much. Large birds which bread at older ages. These birds spend even more time with their parents, and there are only one or two eggs per year! They rarely die before they reach maturity but every life counts. They basically NEVER die from running into windows, but they aren't smart enough to not get killed by wind turbines. So the numerical statistics are meaningless. It is like saying that the death of a single human doesn't mean anything at all, because we tend to swat a lot of mosquitoes.
  - ino 10y ago
    perhaps you'd also be able to screw with the living habits of underwater life that relies of the earth's magnetic field
mynewtb 10y ago
Not "to be" but "envisioned by tennet"! Sounds great though!
Johnny555 10y ago
I remember when the USA used to be able and willing to create interesting cutting edge technology like this. Now we're building oil pipelines, cutting car efficiency standards, and promoting coal. Anything that involves alternative energy has suddenly become "too expensive", "bad for jobs", or "liberal elitism". Soon we'll have reverted back to the 1950's, which apparently is where "we" want to be -- even back to the cold war era nuclear ramp-up. I suppose we'll also be back to building back-yard bomb shelters, I guess that will help with jobs.
- Proven 10y ago
  There's nothing cutting edge in lowering the living standard of citizens. Fascists and communists mastered that decades ago
- timthelion 10y ago
  Well, the 50s were interesting, at least, in that the US proved itself capable of accomplishing major, super-inovative projects. Actually, if the US were to do something like this, then it would be kinda 50sish in a way, wouldn't it? When was the last time that the US government set a goal that seemed unreachable, like the moon landing, or before that the rail-road across the continent and actually reached that goal? I'm not really sure I'm a big fan of such massive government projects myself though. Private companies certainly managed to build a fiberopitic data network that spans every major city, and excelent wireless phone coverage, and some really fast CPUs, and a new type of smaller light commuter jet which, along with Europes airbus, revolutionised cheep intercity travel. Unlike in the 50s, none of that was done by the feds.
  - EliRivers 10y ago
    No modern CPUs without huge government programmes fifty years ago. Similarly for communications and very much so for aerospace; cheap and private now, evolved from expensive and social back then.
- conjecTech 10y ago
  The tax programs surrounding solar and wind in the US amount to a 50-60% subsidy of new plants. Without that, an enormous amount of the progress being made in those fields wouldn't be happening. I'm usually the first one in line to criticize the government, but in the case, the facts say something different.
Gravityloss 10y ago
One problem of building so many in one area (within a couple hundred kilometers?) is that there is less geographic averaging of wind. When the wind dies there, likely there is very little production. That probably limits it to some percentage. Would be interesting to see some summary what kind of other measures are required in the grid, the bigger it gets. Things like flexible demand, pumped storage (all the countries are flat except Norway).
- llukas 10y ago
  Recent development: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/german-institute-successfully-tests-underwater-energy-storage-sphere/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/german-institute-suc...
- ezzaf 10y ago
  This is partially mitigated by double use of the island's connectors as interconnects. If energy production on the island dropped to zero, the entire cable capacity would be able to move power between connected nations. The 'flat' United Kingdom has 2.8GW of existing pumped storage capacity. (http://www.british-hydro.org/hydro_in_the_uk http://www.british-hydro.org/hydro_in_the_uk) If this was the only power generation in the area it would be an issue, but even such a large power plant as what they propose would be a highly effective addition to the grid of the north sea area.
Ono-Sendai 10y ago
Wouldn't there be enough turbines packed in such a small area that they would 'wind shadow' each other?
- cr1895 10y ago
  While it looks like there will be turbines on/around this island hub, it's primarily a hub for distributing power from geographically disparate wind farms to North Sea countries. The island itself isn't so much for localized generation. Turbine spacing would in any case be no different from other offshore wind farms. There's a lot of interesting CFD modeling that goes into optimizing wind farm layout given the prevailing atmospheric conditions. Rule-of-thumb though is 7-10 rotor diameters between turbines to limit the shadow effect.
- nraynaud 10y ago
  Separate them from 10 times their diameter. You also avoid aligning the array in the dominant wind. Before working in the industry I had never realized it but wind turbines mostly produce in one direction, in the other directions the wind tend to be at the wrong speed.
nraynaud 10y ago
Can someone develop on the AC/DC aspect of the distribution? It makes no intuitive sense to me. Wind turbines generally have an asynchronous generator whose electric side is synchronized with the distribution network.
- caf 10y ago
  Submarine power cables use HVDC rather than AC because the capacitance of the water makes the reactive losses of AC transmission a lot higher in that environment. This doesn't affect HVDC. They're also talking about connecting to multiple separate national grids, which is of course easier to do with HVDC.
  - nraynaud 10y ago
    thanks a lots. With the keyword HVDC I could find some interesting wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current (I always sought that the entire European grid was synchronous it looks like it's not the case.)

75 points by flexie 10y ago

More of the same idiotic thinking - produce ludicrously electric energy where it's not necessary

Maybe they would actually be better off without having green areas on the island. Tiny islands in the middle of the sea tend to be major bird magnets, and that doesn't seem to be a good mix with wind. It looks nice on the render, but it would be probably be better to make the island surface as inhospitable to birds as possible to make sure they don't get in the habit of flying there and gettign killed by the turbines.

foota 10y ago
I wonder if you might be able to use a magnetic field to screw with the birds and make them not want to go there. (since birds rely on the Earth's magnetic field for navigation) Alternatively, I wonder how long it would be before the birds learned not to go there if they kept dying.
- timthelion 10y ago
  That is an interesting thought, for such a remote area. I have no idea if it would work. I also don't know how much energy would be needed to change the magnetic feild enough. The earth is, afterall, one hellovabig magnet. Most magnets won't move a compas more than an arms length away.
  - foota 10y ago
    Conveniently, there's a huge power plant nearby ;) but fair. I read the other day that the space magnet proposed to generate a magnetic field to protect a transformed Mars' atmosphere would be "charged" and then not require active power. I don't know enough physics to know if similar is possible here.
- stuaxo 10y ago
  Are birds more likely to die from a windmill than say electricity cables, or other structures?
  - foota 10y ago
    Birds are safe from electricity cables, since there's no voltage difference when they land on a line.
    - jonathansizz 10y ago
      They don't get electrocuted, but they still die from collisions with the lines. https://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-birds/collisions/electric-utility-lines.php https://www.fws.gov/birds/bird-enthusiasts/threats-to-birds/...
  - Maultasche 10y ago
    No. I've seen the statistics for how many birds are estimated to be killed by human-made objects. Buildings were the biggest killer of birds by far. Many millions of birds each year are killed by colliding with windows on buildings. They often don't realize the window is there. I'm guessing the bird sees through the window and doesn't realize there's a barrier or they see a reflection of the sky instead. Automobiles were also big killers of birds. Windmills were estimated to result in 0.1% of bird deaths by man-made objects or something really tiny like that. I don't understand why people freak out about birds being killed by wind turbines when vastly larger numbers are being killed by buildings and cars. Nobody is yelling about saving the birds by getting rid of buildings and cars.
    - timthelion 10y ago
      I'm not freeking out. I'm pointing something out. However, you really need to understand these statistics better. There are three types of bird mating pattern: First year breaders. These tend to be small birds who lay eggs, feed the young, teach them to fly and forget about them. First year breaders die at an enormous rate. I think that more than half don't survive the first year. But they lay a lot of eggs and if a few billion of them are eaten by cats and hit by cars it doesn't matter. Seccond year birds. These are almost as expendable as first year breaders, however, they teach their young how to find food and some cultural things as well. Far fewer of these die, but they are smarter and they don't hit windows as much. Large birds which bread at older ages. These birds spend even more time with their parents, and there are only one or two eggs per year! They rarely die before they reach maturity but every life counts. They basically NEVER die from running into windows, but they aren't smart enough to not get killed by wind turbines. So the numerical statistics are meaningless. It is like saying that the death of a single human doesn't mean anything at all, because we tend to swat a lot of mosquitoes.
- ino 10y ago
  perhaps you'd also be able to screw with the living habits of underwater life that relies of the earth's magnetic field

mynewtb 10y ago

Not "to be" but "envisioned by tennet"! Sounds great though!

Johnny555 10y ago

I remember when the USA used to be able and willing to create interesting cutting edge technology like this. Now we're building oil pipelines, cutting car efficiency standards, and promoting coal. Anything that involves alternative energy has suddenly become "too expensive", "bad for jobs", or "liberal elitism". Soon we'll have reverted back to the 1950's, which apparently is where "we" want to be -- even back to the cold war era nuclear ramp-up. I suppose we'll also be back to building back-yard bomb shelters, I guess that will help with jobs.

Proven 10y ago
There's nothing cutting edge in lowering the living standard of citizens. Fascists and communists mastered that decades ago
timthelion 10y ago
Well, the 50s were interesting, at least, in that the US proved itself capable of accomplishing major, super-inovative projects. Actually, if the US were to do something like this, then it would be kinda 50sish in a way, wouldn't it? When was the last time that the US government set a goal that seemed unreachable, like the moon landing, or before that the rail-road across the continent and actually reached that goal? I'm not really sure I'm a big fan of such massive government projects myself though. Private companies certainly managed to build a fiberopitic data network that spans every major city, and excelent wireless phone coverage, and some really fast CPUs, and a new type of smaller light commuter jet which, along with Europes airbus, revolutionised cheep intercity travel. Unlike in the 50s, none of that was done by the feds.
- EliRivers 10y ago
  No modern CPUs without huge government programmes fifty years ago. Similarly for communications and very much so for aerospace; cheap and private now, evolved from expensive and social back then.
conjecTech 10y ago
The tax programs surrounding solar and wind in the US amount to a 50-60% subsidy of new plants. Without that, an enormous amount of the progress being made in those fields wouldn't be happening. I'm usually the first one in line to criticize the government, but in the case, the facts say something different.

Gravityloss 10y ago

One problem of building so many in one area (within a couple hundred kilometers?) is that there is less geographic averaging of wind. When the wind dies there, likely there is very little production. That probably limits it to some percentage. Would be interesting to see some summary what kind of other measures are required in the grid, the bigger it gets. Things like flexible demand, pumped storage (all the countries are flat except Norway).

llukas 10y ago
Recent development: https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/german-institute-successfully-tests-underwater-energy-storage-sphere/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/german-institute-suc...
ezzaf 10y ago
This is partially mitigated by double use of the island's connectors as interconnects. If energy production on the island dropped to zero, the entire cable capacity would be able to move power between connected nations. The 'flat' United Kingdom has 2.8GW of existing pumped storage capacity. (http://www.british-hydro.org/hydro_in_the_uk http://www.british-hydro.org/hydro_in_the_uk) If this was the only power generation in the area it would be an issue, but even such a large power plant as what they propose would be a highly effective addition to the grid of the north sea area.

Ono-Sendai 10y ago

Wouldn't there be enough turbines packed in such a small area that they would 'wind shadow' each other?

cr1895 10y ago
While it looks like there will be turbines on/around this island hub, it's primarily a hub for distributing power from geographically disparate wind farms to North Sea countries. The island itself isn't so much for localized generation. Turbine spacing would in any case be no different from other offshore wind farms. There's a lot of interesting CFD modeling that goes into optimizing wind farm layout given the prevailing atmospheric conditions. Rule-of-thumb though is 7-10 rotor diameters between turbines to limit the shadow effect.
nraynaud 10y ago
Separate them from 10 times their diameter. You also avoid aligning the array in the dominant wind. Before working in the industry I had never realized it but wind turbines mostly produce in one direction, in the other directions the wind tend to be at the wrong speed.

nraynaud 10y ago

Can someone develop on the AC/DC aspect of the distribution? It makes no intuitive sense to me. Wind turbines generally have an asynchronous generator whose electric side is synchronized with the distribution network.

caf 10y ago
Submarine power cables use HVDC rather than AC because the capacitance of the water makes the reactive losses of AC transmission a lot higher in that environment. This doesn't affect HVDC. They're also talking about connecting to multiple separate national grids, which is of course easier to do with HVDC.
- nraynaud 10y ago
  thanks a lots. With the keyword HVDC I could find some interesting wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current (I always sought that the entire European grid was synchronous it looks like it's not the case.)