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Silly question, but is wind at sea guaranteed? What if weather patterns change? It's really expensive to put up these offshore turbines, but with systemic clima
by sempron64 7y ago
Silly question, but is wind at sea guaranteed? What if weather patterns change? It's really expensive to put up these offshore turbines, but with systemic climate change is it possible they'd be becalmed?
- jsingleton 7y agoYou can explore the data here: https://electricinsights.co.uk https://electricinsights.co.uk You can even split wind into onshore and offshore, although the data is patchy. Wind varies, but from a quick look offshore hasn't gone to zero over the past year and neither has onshore.
- mattmanser 7y agoIt's not guaranteed, if you'd ever been sailing you'd know it's definitely not guaranteed!
- viraptor 7y agoSailing is a different use case though. For wind turbines it doesn't matter if the wind died down in a single place, if you have them spread over a large area and in multiple sites. It's definitely not guaranteed that a single one will always work, but pretty much guaranteed that the system overall will never stop.
- mjlee 7y agoSome winds are generated because of the Earth's structure. The trade winds are pretty consistent. My favourite bit of meteorology trivia is that the wealthier areas in British cities are almost exclusively to the west - this is because the prevailing wind is from the west and so pollution producing factories have been placed in the east of the city. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_winds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_winds
- martinald 7y agoNo but you can put far larger turbines up at sea (much easier to transport a 100m blade at sea than taking it down windy back roads up a hill on land). Larger turbines are more productive especially at lower wind speeds as far as I know.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- benj111 7y agoNothings guaranteed. Worst case scenario for Britain would be a period of little wind in the North sea, in Winter. That would be unusual, but not unheard of. I'm not aware of any plausible scenarios where global warming would lead to less wind, but I suppose its locally possible.
- gcthomas 7y agoBritain is connected to other countries' grids via inter-connectors, so that provides a lot of backup in the system.
- NeedMoreTea 7y agoNot to forget there's offshore wind on the West coast, and around Scotland too. Not so much yet, but still. The chances of no wind around the whole British Isles, encompassing Western Approaches, Irish Sea, Northern Isles and North Sea is slim. :)
- marcosdumay 7y agoThe sea is a huge area without hills or mountains to reduce the wind speed, and near shore there is a daily guaranteed temperature differential nearby to generate some wind. So, yes, it's so likely that it's practically guaranteed. Too much wind is an orders of magnitude more likely problem.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wongarsu 7y ago>Too much wind is an orders of magnitude more likely problem. It's worth elaborating that too much wind is as bad as too little wind. The blades can only spin so fast before disintegrating, so wind turbines have transmissions and choose a gear appropriate to the current wind speed. Once wind speeds exceed what the highest gear can handle the turbine locks the blades to prevent damage. In that state it doesn't produce any electricity.
- Robotbeat 7y agoThat's not the whole story and is somewhat misleading. Wind turbines feather the blades at high velocity to keep from spinning too fast; they rarely actually have to lock the blades and stop electricity production, and even then that'd be a very localized drop in electricity, more than compensated by increased production from surrounding areas with strong winds.
- yread 7y agoSometimes power is actually used to keep them turning as they need strong wind to start turning. At least that was true 10 years ago or so.
- Reason077 7y ago> "It's really expensive to put up these offshore turbines" They are more expensive than on-shore wind turbines, but still significantly cheaper than other forms of generation (such as nuclear). With geographic and technological diversity, "smart grid" demand management, inter-connectors, storage tech, and a modest investment in nuclear baseload, we can get pretty close to 100% low-carbon generation in the UK over the next few decades. Even as grid demand increases with the gradual electrification of heating and transport.
- MiroF 7y agoYou can't drop nuclear as if that's an averagely priced alternative that you're comparing to.
- benj111 7y agoWhat options have we got for low carbon generation? Onshore and offshore wind, Nuclear (all mentioned), solar, hydro. As far as I'm aware all the good hydro sites in Britain have been used up, so there's only solar that really should have been mentioned. Off shore wind is probably more expensive that solar, does that really change the parents point?
- toyg 7y agoI know solar doesn't actually require clear skies etc etc, but I still laugh whenever it comes up - because of the notouriously-depressing British weather...
- pjc50 7y agoIn January I was sat in a park in Scotland eating lunch, feeling the sun on my face, and realized that global warming has probably ruined this cliche forever.
- isostatic 7y agoNo. Wind production in the UK over the last 12 months has varied from 12,456MW (on Jan 7th at 21:00) to 142MW (May 1st 08:50) Most of that is from the sea.
- Brakenshire 7y agoIt’s about half and half onshore and offshore, not mostly offshore.