11 ms·

The world’s biggest offshore wind farm, Hornsea 2, generates first power

200 points by pmlnr 5y ago

divbzero 5y ago
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%202%20from%20sea.jpg https://via.ritzau.dk/ir-files/13560592/4605/6023/Hornsea%20...
- Gwypaas 5y ago
  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.vestas.com/en/products/offshore/V236-15MW https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind/haliade-x-offshore-turbine https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind... https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-services/offshore/wind-turbine-sg-14-222-dd https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-services/offshore...
  - divbzero 5y ago
    All of these turbines feature rotor diameters >200 m.
bjourne 5y ago
According to this article https://www.offshorewind.biz/2020/10/02/hornsea-two-offshore-construction-begins/ 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 5y ago
  And hella impressive compared to any nuclear project!
  - edhelas 5y ago
    Nuclear is slow and massive to build indeed :) However, the few last nuclear plants in Germany produced more power than the 250B€, 20 years planned, solar-panels German total farms in 2020. Those plants are planned to be closed down this year and next year.
    - bryanlarsen 5y ago
      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!
      - p2detar 5y ago
        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.
      - edhelas 5y ago
        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.
        pydry 5y ago
        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)
- alx__ 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    The planning application was submitted in 2015, with several years preparation before then.
trembonator 5y ago
heurisko 5y ago
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 https://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_186.shtml [2] https://www.siemensgamesa.com/en-int/products-and-services/hybrid-and-storage/green-hydrogen https://www.siemensgamesa.com/en-int/products-and-services/h... [3] https://www.energynetworks.org/newsroom/hydrogen-blending-what-is-it-and-why-does-it-matter https://www.energynetworks.org/newsroom/hydrogen-blending-wh...
- gilbetron 5y ago
  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 https://youtu.be/Ui6wWzxCrQ8
- thehappypm 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  There are better ways to use hydrogen than burning it in boilers. Check out the hydrogen ladder https://mobile.twitter.com/mliebreich/status/1426900737313984514?lang=en-GB 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.
anonnyj 5y ago
Have we solved the problem of propellers breaking a lot and being nob recyclable yet?
- WJW 5y ago
  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-wind-power-waste-vestas-unveils-blade-recycling-technology-2021-05-17/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/end-wi..., which you could easily have found with a single google search.
  - edhelas 5y ago
    > 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 5y ago
    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.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  Let’s say your an aluminum refinery. Would you rather process these propellers or raw ore?
  - kleton 5y ago
    Are these aluminum or some fiber-reinforced composite?
eggfriedrice 5y ago
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.
kitd 5y ago
IIRC a single turn of one of these turbines generates enough power for an average family house for one day.
Tade0 5y ago
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__ 5y ago
  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/wind-turbine-sg-14-222-dd https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-services/offshore... [1]: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/regionale/midtvest/verdens-stoerste-vindmoelle-snurrer-i-thy-kan-lave-stroem-til-18000 https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/regionale/midtvest/verdens-stoerst...
bryanlarsen 5y ago
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 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 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.
- gwright 5y ago
  > Renewables and electrification are the primary solution to the climate change problem Not until grid-scale energy storage is widely available and affordable.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    One might reasonably consider "grid-scale energy storage" to be an implicit part of "renewables and electrification".
    - gwright 5y ago
      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".
      - iso1631 5y ago
        > grid-scale energy storage doesn't yet exist The New Zealand south island electric grid is almost entirely grid-scale energy storage, in the form of hydro. Easy to recharge (pump water uphill, although NZ doesn't need that), easy to tap (open gates).
gatestone 5y ago
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?
- thehappypm 5y ago
  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.
- eugene-d 5y ago
  You mean GW? I'm confused
  - spenrose 5y ago
    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-talk-of-offshore-wind-replacing-nuclear https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/hornsea-spawns-...
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
This project makes me proud to be a human. I wish we could put money into things like this only.
ykevinator2 5y ago
This is so great.
the-alchemist 5y ago
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.
eggy 5y ago
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.
hourislate 5y ago
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 5y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Wind_turbines 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]"
hetspookjee 5y ago
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.
- trenchgun 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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/pii/S0195925517303505 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019592551... It was the one of the five papers included in the authors PhD thesis, "Towards Sustainable Data Centers and ICT Services" https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/38725/isbn9789526086125.pdf https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/38725/i...
magwa101 5y ago
kingcharles 5y ago
1.32 gigawatts! 1.32 GIGAWATTS!

200 points by pmlnr 5y ago

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%202%20from%20sea.jpg https://via.ritzau.dk/ir-files/13560592/4605/6023/Hornsea%20...

Gwypaas 5y ago
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.vestas.com/en/products/offshore/V236-15MW https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind/haliade-x-offshore-turbine https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind... https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-services/offshore/wind-turbine-sg-14-222-dd https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-services/offshore...
- divbzero 5y ago
  All of these turbines feature rotor diameters >200 m.

bjourne 5y ago

According to this article https://www.offshorewind.biz/2020/10/02/hornsea-two-offshore-construction-begins/ 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 5y ago
And hella impressive compared to any nuclear project!
- edhelas 5y ago
  Nuclear is slow and massive to build indeed :) However, the few last nuclear plants in Germany produced more power than the 250B€, 20 years planned, solar-panels German total farms in 2020. Those plants are planned to be closed down this year and next year.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    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!
    - p2detar 5y ago
      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.
    - edhelas 5y ago
      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.
      - pydry 5y ago
        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)
alx__ 5y ago
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 5y ago
  The planning application was submitted in 2015, with several years preparation before then.

trembonator 5y ago

heurisko 5y ago

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 https://www.withouthotair.com/c26/page_186.shtml [2] https://www.siemensgamesa.com/en-int/products-and-services/hybrid-and-storage/green-hydrogen https://www.siemensgamesa.com/en-int/products-and-services/h... [3] https://www.energynetworks.org/newsroom/hydrogen-blending-what-is-it-and-why-does-it-matter https://www.energynetworks.org/newsroom/hydrogen-blending-wh...

gilbetron 5y ago
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 https://youtu.be/Ui6wWzxCrQ8
thehappypm 5y ago
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 5y ago
There are better ways to use hydrogen than burning it in boilers. Check out the hydrogen ladder https://mobile.twitter.com/mliebreich/status/1426900737313984514?lang=en-GB 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.

anonnyj 5y ago

Have we solved the problem of propellers breaking a lot and being nob recyclable yet?

WJW 5y ago
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-wind-power-waste-vestas-unveils-blade-recycling-technology-2021-05-17/ https://www.reuters.com/business/sustainable-business/end-wi..., which you could easily have found with a single google search.
- edhelas 5y ago
  > 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 5y ago
  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.
thehappypm 5y ago
Let’s say your an aluminum refinery. Would you rather process these propellers or raw ore?
- kleton 5y ago
  Are these aluminum or some fiber-reinforced composite?

eggfriedrice 5y ago

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.

kitd 5y ago

IIRC a single turn of one of these turbines generates enough power for an average family house for one day.

Tade0 5y ago

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__ 5y ago
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/wind-turbine-sg-14-222-dd https://www.siemensgamesa.com/products-and-services/offshore... [1]: https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/regionale/midtvest/verdens-stoerste-vindmoelle-snurrer-i-thy-kan-lave-stroem-til-18000 https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/regionale/midtvest/verdens-stoerst...

bryanlarsen 5y ago

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 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 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.

gwright 5y ago
> Renewables and electrification are the primary solution to the climate change problem Not until grid-scale energy storage is widely available and affordable.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  One might reasonably consider "grid-scale energy storage" to be an implicit part of "renewables and electrification".
  - gwright 5y ago
    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".
    - iso1631 5y ago
      > grid-scale energy storage doesn't yet exist The New Zealand south island electric grid is almost entirely grid-scale energy storage, in the form of hydro. Easy to recharge (pump water uphill, although NZ doesn't need that), easy to tap (open gates).

gatestone 5y ago

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?

thehappypm 5y ago
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.
eugene-d 5y ago
You mean GW? I'm confused
- spenrose 5y ago
  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-talk-of-offshore-wind-replacing-nuclear https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/hornsea-spawns-...

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

This project makes me proud to be a human. I wish we could put money into things like this only.

ykevinator2 5y ago

This is so great.

the-alchemist 5y ago

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.

eggy 5y ago

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.

hourislate 5y ago

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 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment#Wind_turbines 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]"

hetspookjee 5y ago

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.

trenchgun 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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/pii/S0195925517303505 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S019592551... It was the one of the five papers included in the authors PhD thesis, "Towards Sustainable Data Centers and ICT Services" https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/38725/isbn9789526086125.pdf https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/38725/i...

magwa101 5y ago

kingcharles 5y ago

1.32 gigawatts! 1.32 GIGAWATTS!