
Offshore wind to become a $1T industry - kieranmaine
https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2019/october/offshore-wind-to-become-a-1-trillion-industry.html
======
kitd
As a fun aside, the largest offshore wind farm in the world has just been
opened off the UK's east coast. Just a single rotation of one of the 174
turbines can provide an average house with its electricity needs for a day.

[https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/worlds-
largest-w...](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/worlds-largest-wind-
farm/index.html)

~~~
achow
That's a very interesting trivia.

The size comparison:
[https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/06/13/14/4D2F6ADC000...](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/06/13/14/4D2F6ADC00000578-5838555-With_an_enormous_505_foot_154_metre_wingspan_each_turbine_is_lar-a-23_1528895401905.jpg)

~~~
skrebbel
Because it's Friday night, here's some additional, off-topic, trivia:
[http://superset.eu/abraj.jpg](http://superset.eu/abraj.jpg)

That's the Daily Mail's windmill size picture, set beside the Abraj Al-Bait.
My hobby is pointing out the existence of this building to people. Please
forgive the jpg artifacts and the horrible photoshopping, but the point is,
_this is to scale_. (give or take a few %)

Now, it's not the worlds _tallest_ building per say, but certainly the most
_collosal_ thing ever made by mankind. Of course (where else) in Saudi Arabia.
As shown schematically in the image, its dimensions are _insane_ x _nuts_ x
_wtf_.

EDIT: fix image link

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Wow that's ugly (the Saudi hotel not the wind turbine). Totally worth
demolishing an ancient fort and levelling the hill it stood on to make room
for it. Saudi seems to have no interest at all in preserving any heritage or
significant sites.

Newest build turbines are 220m diameter, so 50% larger than that. Those will
be used on the Dogger Bank windfarm that, IIRC starts construction next year.
I dread to think what will be a state of the art diameter in 2029.

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/01/worlds-l...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/01/worlds-
largest-wind-turbines-to-be-built-off-yorkshire-coast)

~~~
rory096
>Totally worth demolishing an ancient fort and levelling the hill it stood on
to make room for it.

1780 CE isn't exactly ancient. As to whether it was "worth it," I imagine the
intended benefits were more about providing somewhere to accommodate 8 million
visitors to the city than the aesthetic preference of skyscrapers to forts.
(Though personally, I don't see how it's 'ugly'.)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajyad_Fortress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajyad_Fortress)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
More recent than I remembered when the reports of the hill being flattened
were doing the rounds when it was built, but it doesn't stand alone. Saudi has
quite some considerable track record of clearing significant Muslim and
historic sites to build yet another slab sided monstrosity[1].

Ugly is subjective, but to my eyes it's a large McMansion. Which would
normally imply trying to look more expensive than it is, using random features
and jarring or anachronistic details, but in this case with colossal budget
that clearly doesn't apply. :)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_early_Islamic_h...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_of_early_Islamic_heritage_sites_in_Saudi_Arabia)

------
pithymaxim
Is the headline figure here actually kind of small?

| The IEA finds that global offshore wind capacity may increase 15-fold and
attract around $1 trillion of <<cumulative>> investment by 2040.

Averaged over the next 20 years, that's $50 billion per year, or 2.5 percent
of oil and gas revenues in 2017[0], or 7 percent of what was invested in oil
and gas supply in 2016[1]. I could be thinking about this wrong but it seems
like there numbers could have been much more encouraging.

[0] [https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030915/what-
percent...](https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030915/what-percentage-
global-economy-comprised-oil-gas-drilling-sector.asp) [1]
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iea-energy-
investment/ele...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iea-energy-
investment/electricity-investments-surpass-oil-gas-for-second-year-running-
iea-idUSKBN1K70KB)

------
tim333
Related, they've figured it could generate 100% of present electricity needs
[https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/25/business/offshore-wind-
en...](https://edition.cnn.com/2019/10/25/business/offshore-wind-
energy/index.html)

~~~
toomuchtodo
With solar penetration increasing fast, and so much wind potential, it’s
almost impossible not to transition off of fossil fuels rapidly. The economics
are just too good to ignore. Storage isn't even an issue; we'll overbuild
renewables and curtail as needed, which is cheap now (under 2 cents/kwh) and
works until batteries come down in cost (which _will_ happen).

~~~
ThomPete
There are a number of misunderstandings when it comes to wind and solar I wish
more people were aware of.

Wind and solar is only electricity. Electricity is 15-20 percent of our energy
needs.

Wind and solar needs backup sources from either gas, coal, nuclear or oil
because of the intermittency issue and low capacity factor.

Regardless of whether solar cells become cheaper, it makes energy more
expensive as a whole because it makes the energy system more complex and as
many might have learned in physics, starting up something take more energy
than when it's up and running. This is true for coal plants too and with wind
and solar being highly fluctuating and with highly fluctuating demands on the
backup sources.

The use of fossil fuel is increasing not decreasing more than wind and solar.

You can't make either windmills or solar cells without fossil fuel.

Wind and solar is only 1% of the worlds energy not projected to be much more
than 3-4% in 2040.

[https://www.iea.org/weo/?fbclid=IwAR2LwDYcozvpGCOa3bIi2ieMbj...](https://www.iea.org/weo/?fbclid=IwAR2LwDYcozvpGCOa3bIi2ieMbjuykZb0HY-p3ZByxMXDEIfH36ydeYbVaxs)

In other words, fossil fuels aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

~~~
bjourne
> Wind and solar is only electricity. Electricity is 15-20 percent of our
> energy needs.

It depends on how you look at it. Solar and wind energy is absolutely used for
growing crops for example. Oil also, of course, for creating fertilizers.

> Wind and solar needs backup sources from either gas, coal, nuclear or oil
> because of the intermittency issue and low capacity factor.

Not really. Availability might be an issue for onshore wind but not for
offshore. 200 meters up in the air, out in the North sea it blows a lot! In
addition, hydro power can be used to balance out the supply.

One can always conjure some "perfect storm" scenario in which it isn't windy
so no wind power, cloudy so no solar power and not enough water so no hydro
power and ask what happens then? But what is the probability of such a
situation ever occurring? If it is incredibly low, then I don't think it makes
sense to consider it.

~~~
malpighien
Do you have any source showing that wind turbines in the north sea can deliver
electricity on demand 365d/24h. Renewable energy is all nice and fine but when
it comes to having electricity available at any given time there is a reason
why germany has so many coal plants to compensate the slack or why UK taps in
France nuclear capacity when brits turn on their water kettle during the ad
break.

~~~
bjourne
No electricity source has 100% availability. Nuclear tops out at about 90% so
tough luck for the poor Britons that want to drink tea during the remaining
10% of the time.

Modern offshore wind farms features huge wind turbines built dozens of
kilometers out in the sea on spots chosen by computer simulations to have
optimal wind conditions. They can reach up to 60% utilization meaning that 60%
of the time they produce electricity at full capacity.
[https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/09/04/5-stats-about-
offs...](https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/09/04/5-stats-about-offshore-
wind-power-thatll-blow-you.aspx) Of course that is still lower than nuclear's
90% so what you do is that you build many wind farms. Especially if augmented
with hydro power they can be a just as reliable electricity source as nuclear
power.

~~~
xyzzyz
_Nuclear tops out at about 90% so tough luck for the poor Britons that want to
drink tea during the remaining 10% of the time._

This is extremely disingenious. A particular plant might have 90%
availability, but collectively with a handful of plants hitting five-six nines
should not be a problem. The crucial thing is that the performance of nuclear
plants is _uncorrelated_ : if one plant is not producing power, there are not
many situations in which other plant aren't producing power either at the same
time. On the other hand, with solar or wind, correlated performance is
typical: winter tends to happen to the whole country at the same time, bad
weather covers huge swaths of the country, etc. This might be worked around to
some degree if your country is huge (like US), but if you're, say, Austria,
your only option is nuclear or depending on the neighbors on the most crucial
thing you need.

~~~
bjourne
No it is not disingenuous! The point is that the standard of reliability that
you require for renewable energy cannot be higher than the one you require for
nuclear energy.

You say that a handful of nuclear plants can hit five nines of reliability.
Sure, but then you must also consider a _network_ of thousands of wind parks
that can also hit five nines of reliability without breaking a sweat. Even
assuming a high correlation in wind conditions.

You say that import is not an option because electricity is so critical. But
then how come all the world's nuclear power is dependent on imports of uranium
from Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia? Not to mention oil and food imports.

Is wind power the perfect energy source? No. Is it better than what we have?
YES.

~~~
ThomPete
the reliability of nuclear is 90%, the reliability of wind and solar is 20-40%

So yes its pretty disingenuous . Nuclear is a backup for wind and solar, not
the other way around.

------
40acres
How many offshore wind farms are there in the US? I heard a radio story a
while back about some homeowners in New England pushing back against a
proposed wind farm for aesthetic reasons -- not a surprising development but I
must say I didn't consider it when thinking about proliferation of turbines.

~~~
javagram
Yes, unfortunately they were very successful in doing so.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Wind)

Repealing environmental and permitting laws that allow powerful and wealthy
beachfront property landowners to block wind installations is critical toward
converting to a green economy.

~~~
erentz
I was in Maine for 6 months and the takeaway I got was: environmentalists in
ME/NH/VT don’t want wind power, don’t want a new power line that would bring
clean Quebec hydro power, and they want to shut down the only clean generating
nuclear plant in the area. So basically they don’t want electricity.

------
Animats
When you look this up, you find more estimates than actuals. Wikipedia shows
world offshore wind capacity at 18GW as of 1997. If that's nameplate capacity,
average output is less, maybe half. There are at least 10 individual nuclear
plants in the world with 4GW output or more.

Offshore wind is cheap, but you need dispatchable power or really big
batteries somewhere. Tesla's big battery in Australia is about 129MWH. That's
enough storage to replace a 12 hour wind lull for 5 large offshore turbines.
The battery to wind turbine ratio needs to increase if wind power provides a
large fraction of energy.

------
dev_dull
Out of curiosity, what would happen to you if you were swimming in the water
nearby and a transmission cable was exposed to seawater? What path would the
electricity take in the vastness of open sea?

~~~
prof_mm
There would be no electricity, since the automatic safety systems should
detect such a failure and break the circuits, similar to what should happen if
a cable fails in your bathroom. But assume not, to make it interesting. The
way of shortest resistance is probably still through the cable. Or it would
all go into the ground. I doubt that there would be any danger to a swimmer
(that is not too close). Note that such cables are buried in the ground to
protect them, or rocks are deposited on top of them.

~~~
dev_dull
Thank you for indulging my curiosity!

------
ncmncm
Undersea storage of compressed air, as an alternative to batteries, needs no
technological advances. Just air pumps, pipes, and bags.

Heat lost to the water (maybe half of the energy input to compressed air)
could be reclaimed as the pressure is released, with simple heat exchangers.

~~~
thehappypm
It is a major challenge to have functioning mechanical equipment in a salty,
high-pressure aquatic environment.

~~~
generatorguy
They’ve already got wind turbines and offshore oil rigs. The compressed air as
stored energy under the sea idea uses Kevlar bladders anchored to the sea
floor with a hose or pipe going to the surface. It’s not really that far
fetched.

