O.T. Deep sea wind farms

How do you get the energy from the middle of nowhere to the cities where it's needed? The numbers I've seen put water based wind power at about twice the cost of land based.

George H.

The helicopter industry is enthusiastic. AW&ST estimates that it will require one helicopter per 20 offshore windmills, for maintenance. One BIG helicopter.

Imagine a several-hundreds meter tall floating windmill in a hurricane. Imagine ships and boats dragging anchors over the network of power lines. Imagine none of those blades spinning on a calm day.

Imagine them being built and operated without giant subsidies.

"Dynamic Cable System for Floating Offshore Wind Power Generation"

I kinda support land based wind energy. The numbers I've seen make it competitive with other sources. Water based seems much more costly, but all my 'green' friends like the idea. If you don't look into the practicalities, it does seem nice.. Windmills dotting the middle of lake Erie.

George H.

And giant lasers of death to send the power to shore. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

First typhoon that comes by will make a mess of that, for sure.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

The wind forces on the pylon and turbine blades are not all that much. Certainly, it's less than a floating oil drilling platform. I suspect that proper anchoring to the ocean floor might do the trick. Time permitting, I'll try to find the numbers or grind my own.

The turbine could also be feathered by simply tilting the pylon downwind to reduce the cross sectional area.

However, for a genuine science fiction thriller, it would be interesting to see if the pylon could be temporarily filled with water in order to lower it below the water line. When the storm blows by, pump out the water, and it's back in business producing power.

Charge lithium batteries and ship them back and forth on barges.

Hywind Scotland

(Reposted through Albasani as Eternal September is not propagating to other servers )

Some info on the farm near Aberdeen here:

But who do you believe about the cost per MWh? From about 2/3 of the way down the page: "The amount of electricity generated is currently not profitable, and the project still requires subsidies, but authorities expect it to get cheaper over time"..."Statoil hopes to reduce the cost of Hywind's

Still, compared with Hinckley Point C that seems quite cheap:

But whose figures do you believe? Further down that Wiki section it says "In August 2016, CEO Henrik Poulsen of DONG Energy argued that the UK's future energy needs can be covered with accelerated construction of cheaper offshore wind farms instead of Hinkley Point C. Poulsen state that wind farms could currently undercut HPC's strike price with

Statoil itself have said "Likewise, Statoil estimates that it can ultimately reach a levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) from its

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Surrounded by dead birds and bats...

John :-#(#

Nah, not Muskesque enough. Ship them by hyperloop, that'd be more practical.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

It's more the 60-foot waves that will be the issue, not to mention the occasional vertical >100 foot rogue wave.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

That sounds Boring.

hore waters to deep to allow solid foundations.

power available from 1.5 W m^-2 to 6 W m^-2

at

Giant lasers would be good. We could use them against the Canadian's if they get uppity. :^)

Lot's of energy talk has systemic bias.

(Richard Muller)

I like his last line and will quote.

"The heart of science is in overcoming bias. The difference between a scien tist and layman can be summarized as follows: a layman is easily fooled and is particularly susceptible to self-deception. In contrast, a scientist is easily fooled and is particularly susceptible to self-deception, and knows it. The ?scientific method? consists almost exclusively in techniques used to overcome self-deception. The first step in accomplishin g this is to recognize that biases exist. The danger of optimism and skepti cism bias (like the danger of the devil?for people who believe in s uch things) is that so many people are unaware of its existence. "

George H.

A plumber or farmer who engages in self-deception is soon out of business. A scientist who engages in self-deception can have a long career and a testimonial dinner when he retires.

"An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher. The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble duty and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water."

--John W. Gardner, "Can we be equal and excellent too?" (1963).

Magicians famously have a lot of fun with scientists, who tend to believe their eyes even when they're told it's sleight of hand.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Den onsdag den 25. oktober 2017 kl. 20.19.17 UTC+2 skrev John Larkin:

re waters to deep to allow solid foundations.

ower available from 1.5 W m^-2 to 6 W m^-2

$70) per megawatt hour by

the

nd

a difference.

=1

that's a sneaky (to say the least) graph, it is prices including taxes etc. in Denmark around +70% of it is taxes