Disaster looming in UK offshore wind power

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

On 2/20/2021 at 7:59 PM, Dan Warnick said:

Actually, maintenance costs on a per MW basis is increasing. 

(I'll leave my comment without references, evidence, criteria, location(s) or any other substantiation, the same as you.)

The article the Mark didn't reference the data either, but you seem happy to accept that - presumably because it argues against offshore wind.

Unlike who is a journalist residing in Australia I am actually in the outskirts of the offshore wind industry in Europe and I have first hand knowledge on some of these these things - granted, just the outskirts but never the less I feel fairly confident in my real world observations. 

Additionally, as @NickW noted noted Hughes is renowned for peddling misinformation. Try to research him and read some of the rebuttals on his work. 

[Dan Warnick + 6,100]

4 hours ago, Rasmus Jorgensen said:

The article the Mark didn't reference the data either, but you seem happy to accept that - presumably because it argues against offshore wind.

No, I just think it's lame to say "Actually, maintenance costs on a per MW basis are decreasing." and leave it at that.

[Rasmus Jorgensen + 1,169]

6 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

No, I just think it's lame to say "Actually, maintenance costs on a per MW basis are decreasing." and leave it at that.

Actually, true enough. 

[NickW + 2,714]

7 hours ago, Dan Warnick said:

No, I just think it's lame to say "Actually, maintenance costs on a per MW basis are decreasing." and leave it at that.

Logic would reasonably bring you to that conclusion with massive falls in CFD prices on offshore around Europe. 

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

UK offshore wind power

As I understand it, the Royal Family own the rights to the offshore.  Thus, they will receive royalties from this endeavor.

 

[Tom Nolan + 2,443]

1 minute ago, Tom Nolan said:

UK offshore wind power

As I understand it, the Royal Family own the rights to the offshore.  Thus, they will receive royalties from this endeavor.

 

At the beginning part of this video, this UK NEWS source talks about the Royal Family.

https://youtu.be/eVz1oP_BpkI

[Otis11 + 551]

On 2/16/2021 at 6:26 AM, NickW said:

The area I will agree with Mark is that the UK (and ireland) are going into wind over kill and building way too much to be absorbed by the grid / storage / power to liquid / gas functions.

The Uk with 65 million people is talking about building 40GW (we have 20 already). Ireland with 5 million people is talking about building 40GW which is insane. They won't be able to dump that on the UK grid, have limited pump storage, and are building a small 500MW link to France. 

Were I the UK Energy Minster (not the window licker currently holding that role) , mindful of the fact the UK is mined out of coal, gas production is in decline and we don't want to be reliant on imports I would focus on nuclear. Not some shoddy chinese piece of sh1t but the Rolls Royce SMR* proposals. Rolls Royce have been building decent PWRs for subs for 50 years. Might as well champion a British firm and reinvigorate british engineering. 

*Locate them in areas where the waste heat can be used in horticulture so we are less reliant on Holland and Spain. 

Sounds to me like the real solution is larger interconnects... possibly add Scandinavia for their pumped Hydro. (Nuclear isn't a bad idea either...)

NG, Solar, Wind, and Nuclear are all great technologies... and they're great at what they're good at. The root of the problem is we have an uninformed public being lead by even less informed bureaucrats with agendas who make directives that make little sense. 100% Nuclear would make only marginally more sense than 100% wind. The optimal balance is exactly that... a balance.

(Sorry, been a fun week. I'll get off my soapbox now)

On 2/21/2021 at 8:59 AM, NickW said:

texas could have access to plenty of Hydro / pump storage in the rockies if it invested in the interconnects. Probably also mean it could sell more that wind power to western states. 

I will keep saying it but the redundancy is already there- they just need to tie in emergency gen sets at hospitals / industrial sites to come on before the cascade. 

So, there are a number of reasons why Texas has kept ERCOT separate from either the Eastern or Western grids, and also limited interconnects, not the least of which is politics. If ERCOT connects to either grid or increases the interconnect transfers they will be subject to interstate regulations by the federal government including more oversite by the EPA, DOE, and even DOD (Critical Infrastructure - National Security). As a seperate grid, why they still have to work with these agencies in a larger capacity than they would like (Still have to meet EPA Clean Air and Clean Water based on court ruling these are interstate goods by definition), it limits the interference from the Federal Government, which isn't always friendly to Conservative States and especially Conservative Politicians... (Because the Federal Government would never pool resources and then attach strings to the acceptance to use your own resources...)

For further info - there is a number of emergency gen sets around, but that had its own problem. Due to the massive residential demand in NG, even though we had enough NG in storage to get us through the event, we couldn't get that gas from where it was to where it was needed. The transfer pipelines were not sufficient to avoid dangerously low line pressures in certain areas. So even though we had a NG standby generator that we could have back-fed (even though we're not a utility), the offer was declined because they wanted to reserve that gas for generators with higher efficiency.

This was also a reason for a number of actual NG generators for those not aware. We had NG Power Plant capacity that sat idle because it was fuel starved.

Hence a previous post I made in another thread that truly unbiased observers will walk away from this realizing the importance of NG pipelines and our need for more.

On 2/22/2021 at 5:13 AM, NickW said:

BTW - falling output from gas wells was a major feature in this

The crux of this  lies with ERCOT / inadequacy of provisions to meet peak demand and relying on market mechanisms which work most the time but don't address crisis situations. 

There are a collation of measures which would have met that need but which seems to be lost on many on this 'energy' website. 

See, I'm not sure that's accurate either. Some producers intentionally shut down to save electricity instead of producing gas.

Also realize that this peak came during the winter, which is when the majority of overhauls are done on generating capacity.

Even with this decreased capacity, had residential demand for NG not been so high, ERCOT likely would have held with only minor blackouts. Had Texas had more pipeline capacity, it would have held. 

The market mechanisms absolutely could have been structured better, and likely would have decreased the severity of it, but would not have avoided the event itself. There were a number of factors that when wrong, and the backups were stretched just a hair too far already, leaving no wiggle room to operate.

Honestly the easiest way to avoid this would be with more smart grid technology that allows the utilities to black out sections much more granularly, have smart devices that allow shifting load just a matter of minutes (water heaters, space heaters, fridges and freezers... if these devices could change setpoints just slightly in a coordinated fashion to allow us to operate closer to true capacity without punching past it... possibly could have avoided this, and would reduce cost of operations)

The most straightforward way (though not politically easy) would be to get more NG pipelines and more Interconnects with other grids.

On 2/22/2021 at 12:55 PM, KeyboardWarrior said:

This is good. I had a suspicion that they simply built a larger turbine, gave it the same power rating as a smaller one, and then claimed that capacity factor was improved. 

Hey KBW - there is some of this going on as well, but it's not a bad thing. The industry has found it more profitable to continue upsizing the blades and hub height without upsizing the generator being spun. This effectively caps out the system during peak wind conditions, limiting how much it can produce, but allows it to produce much more of it's capacity in a wider variety of wind conditions. While this produces slightly less electricity than it could otherwise, it has the net effect of reducing the cost per kWh and delivering more stable output (note, I didn't say stable, just more stable than previous models).

[NickW + 2,714]

1 hour ago, Tom Nolan said:

UK offshore wind power

As I understand it, the Royal Family own the rights to the offshore.  Thus, they will receive royalties from this endeavor.

 

The Crown Estate owns the seabed rights. The Government control the crown estate. From the crown estate 75% goes to HM treasury. The Royal Family get 25%

its likely if there is a major windfall from seabed rights the Gov will reduce the royal share. 

[bloodman33 + 22]

[bloodman33 + 22]

[Eric Gagen + 713]

On 2/20/2021 at 6:37 PM, NickW said:

No need currently. Hydro , pump storage and gas do a great of flexing up and down to accommodate variations in supply. 

 

On 2/20/2021 at 7:19 PM, ronwagn said:

It definitely was not in Texas, according to the articles I have read. You could blame it on the lack of grid interconnections, but distributed power with localization and redundancy is needed. The redundancy was not adequate. 

Texas doesn't have any reasonable amount of hydropower or pumped storage due to it's flat geography, which means you cannot use hydro as a peaking mechanism.  Connecting it all the way back to hydropower facilities in the Rocky Mountains is a hugely expensive project, well beyond the means of the grid without large increases in electricity costs.  There are much cheaper ways to fix the Texas Grid. 

[Eric Gagen + 713]

On 2/18/2021 at 12:21 PM, Coffeeguyzz said:

Mr. Slawson

That was an absolutely fascinating report that you linked and I thank you for posting it.

 

Some observations relating to offshore wind farm operational 'issues' ...

The 4 biggest problem areas have involved -

1. Gearbox/bearing breakdowns. Primarily lubrication and load stress factors.

As newer projects use almost exclusively direct drive, these earlier problems have been eliminated, but the capex has increased.

2. Turbine blade edge (leading) degradation and/or deformation. As the tips of newer, larger turbines travel at speeds approaching 200 mph, contact with ice chrystals, salt, any solid object affects these lightweight, highly engineered components.

Newer coatings and other methods continue to evolve to address this chronic problem.

3. The early grout issues at the Transition Piece/Base interface were/are horrendous, but newer designs seem to have resolved these challenges.

4. Cable connection problems. A biggie and directly related to the huge opex cost in deeper waters.

The bottom continuously shifts and this puts enormous stress on the cable/base connections.

(BOTH of the Block Island cables are currently being replaced!)

Once divers are employed and work in depths of 100 feet/130 feet and deeper, enormous expenses are incurred. These primarily - but  not exclusively - involve air/gas breathing mixtures and decompression protocols. While the offshore oil/gas industry has successfully addressed this for decades, it all comes at significant cost.

(Use of ROVs  may make sense, but they ain't cheap either).

 

What should be of utmost importance to everyone interested in this industry ...  this is still relatively new 'stuff' and emerging problems continue to arise. The latest example might be the unexpectedly high corrosion rate of the bases  that is now being observed.

 

The author's figures of current UK cost of electricity being £35/Mwh and projected opex of £125/Mwh for 12 year old deepwater offshore projects are very sobering  indeed.

 

As an aside regarding the increasingly touted floating turbines ...

Hywind uses spar buoys with a draught of ~240 feet. That is almost 5 times deeper than most every port in the world.

Likewise, the freeboard clearance of the Hywind column and turbines is over 300 feet, which far exceeds most bridge crossings at harbor mouths. These issues may well be addressed. They are using  semi platforms for a test project off Portugal, but the costs and resources involved in these efforts are wildly misdirected, IMHO. 

 

 

 

 

@Coffeeguyzz - interesting analysis, but the part about floating turbines leaves out the way that spar facilities are actually constructed and used.  They are built lying on their sides, then pulled out to sea where the water is deep enough for them to be flipped upright through controlled flooding.  This controlled flooding continues until the top of the spar is just barely above sea level, and then the upper part (in this case the wind turbine) is set in place with a large floating crane.  Once it's assembled, then it's towed out to it's final location, and the water is pumped out to restore it's bouyancy.  No deepwater ports or special bridge are needed.  The Norweigians did a few massive concrete gravity base oil platforms in fjords with exceptionally deep water, but that was a matter of convenience for them - not a matter of need for anyone else.  

 

Also in really deep water, divers aren't used for the deep parts at all.  Everything is done by ROV, and then divers (if needed) are made to set up shallow connetctions between the deep anchors and tenons and the floating portions of the setup.  ROV operations are cheaper than divers under these conditions because of the extreme difficulty of keeping the divers alive. 

Edited April 23, 2021 by Eric Gagen

[NickW + 2,714]

2 hours ago, Eric Gagen said:

 

Texas doesn't have any reasonable amount of hydropower or pumped storage due to it's flat geography, which means you cannot use hydro as a peaking mechanism.  Connecting it all the way back to hydropower facilities in the Rocky Mountains is a hugely expensive project, well beyond the means of the grid without large increases in electricity costs.  There are much cheaper ways to fix the Texas Grid. 

There are some potential closed loop pump hydro sites in the NW of the state but otherwise I agree. One simple measure would be to require CCGT / OCGT to hold 24/48 hours supply of fuel distillate to switch to if gas supply runs low. Most UK CCGT have this back up. 

As I also pointed out numerous times on the grand thread - allowing the grid operator to bring  emergency gen sets into play before the cascade event would have been very useful and low cost.