8 ms·

I don't think it improves the co2 cost per watt versus nuclear.

by jokoon 5y ago

cycomanic 5y ago
If it improves, it would certainly improve also vs nuclear. Also regarding CO2 cost, nuclear vs wind is certainly not clear cut. This [1] reference says wind is somewhat worse than European nuclear but better than US nuclear. It's also worth pointing out that lifecycle CO2 analysis of Nuclear often consider only ~50 years of nuclear waste storage [2], which is somewhat misleading considering that we have to store some of the waste for thousands of years. [1] https://escholarship.org/content/qt5fw407kf/qt5fw407kf_noSplash_ff206bfec9ac01cf100fe95ecd0e4cd3.pdf https://escholarship.org/content/qt5fw407kf/qt5fw407kf_noSpl... [2] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-return-on-investment.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the...
pjc50 5y ago
The financial cost per watt has long been won by wind, though.
thehappypm 5y ago
It does, actually. Bigger is better for wind. A lot of the costs scale with the width of the tower (more expensive tower, tougher to build, bigger generator, etc) but the power output scales with the area covered by the blades, so the power output grows more quickly than the size/cost.
- aaron-santos 5y ago
  What's the limiting factor in wind turbine size? Is it regulatory, construction capital, materials technology, supportive infrastructure, something else?
  - geewee 5y ago
    Generally construction and materials. Particularly for offshore the supportive infrastructure and maintenance takes up a big chunk of the cost - the expectation is that those costs won't scale with turbine size.
  - patrickk 5y ago
    Not an expert, but the blades are already tricky to transport on land. If they keep increasing in length, it might be only feasible to transport them via ship or transport helicopter. There’s a new planned wind turbine factory on the coast of north east England where they can pump out turbines and deliver via ship.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      Aren't most / all turbine blade factories already on the coast? It's an obvious location when most will be deployed in the North Sea.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        Turbine factories are near where the wind farms are for shipping reasons. For offshore wind you need to be at a good port so you can get the blades directly to a ship. For inland wind farms you locate near where someone is willing to make a long term commitment to buy your windmills. I have no idea what current numbers are, but I expect long term most factories will be inland and produce wind turbines of a size that is limited by local transport roads/laws. At sea might be better, but one factory can produce windmills for any ocean in the world. Inland shipping is far more expensive and so we need more factories scattered around. If your country is near the sea then off-shore wind is best. However a lot of land isn't close enough to the sea to make off-shore practical and so they need a different option.
    - leoedin 5y ago
      The biggest turbines stopped being land based years ago. Onshore wind caps out around 6 MW, while offshore wind is pushing 16 MW. There's just no practical way to handle these huge turbines (and their massive blades) onshore.
  - dialtone 5y ago
    one funny limitation for US only is the Jones Act from 1920, it requires that the vessels that install these offshore wind turbines to be built, owned, crewed and registered in US. And there aren't many boats that can install turbines the size of modern offshore wind turbines. https://www.theverge.com/22296979/us-offshore-ships-wind-boom-installation-vessels https://www.theverge.com/22296979/us-offshore-ships-wind-boo...
    - sbradford26 5y ago
      So I don't believe the Jones Act would come into play in this situation. The Jone Act controls shipping between US ports, so if all you are doing is taking the pieces of the turbines out to be installed and coming back to the same port you haven't shipped anything between ports. It would fall under the same loop hole that cruise ships use, which is since they drop of passengers at the same port they picked them up at nothing has been "shipped between ports".
      - Gwypaas 5y ago
        It does, the US is currently building it's first Jones act compliant Wind Turbine Installation Vessel. New Details on First Jones Act-Compliant Wind Turbine Installation Vessel: https://gcaptain.com/new-details-on-first-jones-act-compliant-wind-turbine-installation-vessel/ https://gcaptain.com/new-details-on-first-jones-act-complian... U.S. Customs and Border Protection Expressly Applies Jones Act to Offshore Wind Projects in U.S. Waters: https://gcaptain.com/u-s-customs-and-border-protection-expressly-applies-jones-act-to-offshore-wind-projects-in-u-s-waters/ https://gcaptain.com/u-s-customs-and-border-protection-expre...
  - usrusr 5y ago
    For land based installations, start as simple as transportation. You certainly don't want to assemble the blades on-site and the contortions they go through for trucking the finished blades are already quite crazy. Had the Cargolifter airship not been abandoned, I'm sure it would be used exclusively as a wind turbine parts carrier.
    - baybal2 5y ago
      I was thinking of portable autoclaves. What about manufacturing blades on-site? Large scale composites are still largely manual labour, and there are few pieces of tooling which themselves need to be one big piece. Mould can be split into sections rather easily.
      - brandmeyer 5y ago
        Manufacturing needs a highly controlled environment. The industry's trend has been towards simplifying the installation process as much as possible. Smaller crew, simpler equipment, less that can go wrong on-site, etc.
        bluGill 5y ago
        You want as few humans off the ground as possible for safety reasons. Someone needs to get to the top of the tower to attach things, but as little as possible. Most wind farms (on shore) are in fields that the farmer has planted. you want to disturb the crop as little as possible while installing which means the factory will be elsewhere so that you don't need to tear up more crop in manufacturing.
- jokoon 5y ago
  still not baseload energy and I am still not sure it beats nuclear per co2 spent.
  - asplake 5y ago
    No, not baseload energy, but there is presumably an optimum overall mix (ideally one that prices in externalities appropriately, non-negligible in nuclear’s case)
  - cycomanic 5y ago
    Can we just stop the baseload myth?! It's been debunked many times [1]. [1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/dispelling-the-nuclear-baseload-myth-nothing-renewables-cant-do-better-94486/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/dispelling-the-nuclear-baseload-...
    - _ph_ 5y ago
      Thanks for the link, it nicely explains what I tried to summarize in my posts about the misconceptions of base load. May be it should be added that of course renewables can be dispatchable if not all of their available capacity is used all the time. The typical gas peaker plans are idle 90% of the time. But people complain less about that, as gas plans consume gas to run, while e.g. solar cells don't have any additional costs for producing electricity vs. not producing electricity. So it seems like a waste to not operate them at full capacity. Yet, the situation isn't that different from a gas plant idling most of the time. Annectodal, the French grid is mostly nuclear and they of course face the problems with running a varying grid load with "base load" power plants. The solution is, to run their nuclear power plants at an average of 75% of their full power, this gives them more ability to regulate the output, but of course it means, that the cost per energy produced raises, as they usually are not fully utilized. Which probably is the reason, why France is exporting a lot of electricity - with the European grid it is cheaper to have a varying export than a variable production.
      - cycomanic 5y ago
        I think we will see much more integration across the European electricity grid in the near future, which makes production fluctuations less and less relevant (they just average out over a large grid). I didn't know how many impediments still existed for an integrated european grid. I only found out when reading up on things today, that Scandinavia operates on a different frequency to mainland Europe, which has been an obstacle for Norway to sell their surplus to the rest of Europe (they are now building a connection to Germany and are bridging the operating frequency so that should be better in the future). Here is an interesting article about this: https://www.power-technology.com/features/how-norway-became-europes-biggest-power-exporter/ https://www.power-technology.com/features/how-norway-became-...
- Gibbon1 5y ago
  Also the wind speed and capacity factor increase with height. Because as you go higher the wind speed increases. And becomes more consistent. That was a problem with early wind turbines.

I don't think it improves the co2 cost per watt versus nuclear.

by jokoon 5y ago

I don't think it improves the co2 cost per watt versus nuclear.

If it improves, it would certainly improve also vs nuclear. Also regarding CO2 cost, nuclear vs wind is certainly not clear cut. This [1] reference says wind is somewhat worse than European nuclear but better than US nuclear. It's also worth pointing out that lifecycle CO2 analysis of Nuclear often consider only ~50 years of nuclear waste storage [2], which is somewhat misleading considering that we have to store some of the waste for thousands of years. [1] https://escholarship.org/content/qt5fw407kf/qt5fw407kf_noSplash_ff206bfec9ac01cf100fe95ecd0e4cd3.pdf https://escholarship.org/content/qt5fw407kf/qt5fw407kf_noSpl... [2] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-return-on-investment.aspx https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the...

pjc50 5y ago

The financial cost per watt has long been won by wind, though.

thehappypm 5y ago

It does, actually. Bigger is better for wind. A lot of the costs scale with the width of the tower (more expensive tower, tougher to build, bigger generator, etc) but the power output scales with the area covered by the blades, so the power output grows more quickly than the size/cost.

aaron-santos 5y ago
What's the limiting factor in wind turbine size? Is it regulatory, construction capital, materials technology, supportive infrastructure, something else?
- geewee 5y ago
  Generally construction and materials. Particularly for offshore the supportive infrastructure and maintenance takes up a big chunk of the cost - the expectation is that those costs won't scale with turbine size.
- patrickk 5y ago
  Not an expert, but the blades are already tricky to transport on land. If they keep increasing in length, it might be only feasible to transport them via ship or transport helicopter. There’s a new planned wind turbine factory on the coast of north east England where they can pump out turbines and deliver via ship.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    Aren't most / all turbine blade factories already on the coast? It's an obvious location when most will be deployed in the North Sea.
    - bluGill 5y ago
      Turbine factories are near where the wind farms are for shipping reasons. For offshore wind you need to be at a good port so you can get the blades directly to a ship. For inland wind farms you locate near where someone is willing to make a long term commitment to buy your windmills. I have no idea what current numbers are, but I expect long term most factories will be inland and produce wind turbines of a size that is limited by local transport roads/laws. At sea might be better, but one factory can produce windmills for any ocean in the world. Inland shipping is far more expensive and so we need more factories scattered around. If your country is near the sea then off-shore wind is best. However a lot of land isn't close enough to the sea to make off-shore practical and so they need a different option.
  - leoedin 5y ago
    The biggest turbines stopped being land based years ago. Onshore wind caps out around 6 MW, while offshore wind is pushing 16 MW. There's just no practical way to handle these huge turbines (and their massive blades) onshore.
- dialtone 5y ago
  one funny limitation for US only is the Jones Act from 1920, it requires that the vessels that install these offshore wind turbines to be built, owned, crewed and registered in US. And there aren't many boats that can install turbines the size of modern offshore wind turbines. https://www.theverge.com/22296979/us-offshore-ships-wind-boom-installation-vessels https://www.theverge.com/22296979/us-offshore-ships-wind-boo...
  - sbradford26 5y ago
    So I don't believe the Jones Act would come into play in this situation. The Jone Act controls shipping between US ports, so if all you are doing is taking the pieces of the turbines out to be installed and coming back to the same port you haven't shipped anything between ports. It would fall under the same loop hole that cruise ships use, which is since they drop of passengers at the same port they picked them up at nothing has been "shipped between ports".
    - Gwypaas 5y ago
      It does, the US is currently building it's first Jones act compliant Wind Turbine Installation Vessel. New Details on First Jones Act-Compliant Wind Turbine Installation Vessel: https://gcaptain.com/new-details-on-first-jones-act-compliant-wind-turbine-installation-vessel/ https://gcaptain.com/new-details-on-first-jones-act-complian... U.S. Customs and Border Protection Expressly Applies Jones Act to Offshore Wind Projects in U.S. Waters: https://gcaptain.com/u-s-customs-and-border-protection-expressly-applies-jones-act-to-offshore-wind-projects-in-u-s-waters/ https://gcaptain.com/u-s-customs-and-border-protection-expre...
- usrusr 5y ago
  For land based installations, start as simple as transportation. You certainly don't want to assemble the blades on-site and the contortions they go through for trucking the finished blades are already quite crazy. Had the Cargolifter airship not been abandoned, I'm sure it would be used exclusively as a wind turbine parts carrier.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    I was thinking of portable autoclaves. What about manufacturing blades on-site? Large scale composites are still largely manual labour, and there are few pieces of tooling which themselves need to be one big piece. Mould can be split into sections rather easily.
    - brandmeyer 5y ago
      Manufacturing needs a highly controlled environment. The industry's trend has been towards simplifying the installation process as much as possible. Smaller crew, simpler equipment, less that can go wrong on-site, etc.
      - bluGill 5y ago
        You want as few humans off the ground as possible for safety reasons. Someone needs to get to the top of the tower to attach things, but as little as possible. Most wind farms (on shore) are in fields that the farmer has planted. you want to disturb the crop as little as possible while installing which means the factory will be elsewhere so that you don't need to tear up more crop in manufacturing.
jokoon 5y ago
still not baseload energy and I am still not sure it beats nuclear per co2 spent.
- asplake 5y ago
  No, not baseload energy, but there is presumably an optimum overall mix (ideally one that prices in externalities appropriately, non-negligible in nuclear’s case)
- cycomanic 5y ago
  Can we just stop the baseload myth?! It's been debunked many times [1]. [1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/dispelling-the-nuclear-baseload-myth-nothing-renewables-cant-do-better-94486/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/dispelling-the-nuclear-baseload-...
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    Thanks for the link, it nicely explains what I tried to summarize in my posts about the misconceptions of base load. May be it should be added that of course renewables can be dispatchable if not all of their available capacity is used all the time. The typical gas peaker plans are idle 90% of the time. But people complain less about that, as gas plans consume gas to run, while e.g. solar cells don't have any additional costs for producing electricity vs. not producing electricity. So it seems like a waste to not operate them at full capacity. Yet, the situation isn't that different from a gas plant idling most of the time. Annectodal, the French grid is mostly nuclear and they of course face the problems with running a varying grid load with "base load" power plants. The solution is, to run their nuclear power plants at an average of 75% of their full power, this gives them more ability to regulate the output, but of course it means, that the cost per energy produced raises, as they usually are not fully utilized. Which probably is the reason, why France is exporting a lot of electricity - with the European grid it is cheaper to have a varying export than a variable production.
    - cycomanic 5y ago
      I think we will see much more integration across the European electricity grid in the near future, which makes production fluctuations less and less relevant (they just average out over a large grid). I didn't know how many impediments still existed for an integrated european grid. I only found out when reading up on things today, that Scandinavia operates on a different frequency to mainland Europe, which has been an obstacle for Norway to sell their surplus to the rest of Europe (they are now building a connection to Germany and are bridging the operating frequency so that should be better in the future). Here is an interesting article about this: https://www.power-technology.com/features/how-norway-became-europes-biggest-power-exporter/ https://www.power-technology.com/features/how-norway-became-...
Gibbon1 5y ago
Also the wind speed and capacity factor increase with height. Because as you go higher the wind speed increases. And becomes more consistent. That was a problem with early wind turbines.