
Denmark: 1,000 Megawatts Of Offshore Wind, And No Signs of Slowing Down - ttuominen
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2013/03/26/denmark-1000-megawatts-of-offshore-wind-and-no-signs-of-slowing-down/
======
simonsarris
I remember seeing the windmills for the first time in person when I was in my
teens, on a flight from Boston to Copanhagen. I saw another "field" of them as
my boat left port in Denmark.

They were incredible to look at, just mesmerizing. They were beautiful,
gorgeous in more than just their form. That something so bold and elegant
could create meaningful amounts of power blew my mind. I remembered reading
about lakes and ponds in New Hampshire that had no persistent human contact
but tested positive for mercury from coal plants. Looking at these windmills
was like staring into a vision of the future. Looking at them, I had never
felt so optimistic about technology before.

When I got home I went on the internet to read about wind power and see if
there were any initiatives in my home state or Massachusetts. The negativity I
found in the papers was its own mind-boggle.

Do you know what they complained about? _The view._

~~~
nawitus
While the view may be a rather weak argument, wind power doesn't make much
sense. Nuclear power is just a better way to produce energy. It's cheap,
stable and just as environmentally friendly. It's too bad that politics
prevent it's usage, adoption and development in so many countries. There's
very little research on thorium power, too, which would solve most of the
remaing negative points about nuclear power.

~~~
tiredofcareer
In case you didn't realize it, you're arguing that wind power doesn't "make
much sense" on an article describing an entire _nation_ implementing almost
25% of its total electric power demand via wind, and planning to raise that to
50% within a decade. I'm just reminding you in case you didn't realize that.

The only problem described in the article is having _too much energy_ (crikey
Moses, what a nightmare, we have to fix the grid). If a wind turbine falls
over, the impact is a little less than if a tsunami envelops a nuclear plant,
isn't it? Not to mention dealing with waste for hundreds or thousands of
years? (I'm not anti-nuclear, just not delusional about its downfalls, and
let's face it, there are _many_. Thorium has waste too.)

~~~
penny500
Denmark's population is smaller than New York City by a couple million. The US
would need a massive, massive number of windmills.

~~~
Someone
If 5 million Danes can afford to build X windmills, I don't see how 60-ish
times 5 million US citizens can't afford to build 60-ish times X windmills.

Population density would be an argument (on average, higher population density
means less wind power per capita), but there, New York probably has more land
area nearby than Denmark.

~~~
aj700
Yes, but Danes are quite prepared to pay 25% VAT and up to 62% income tax so
that among many other things, The (evil statist) State can afford to buy
hugely expensive turbines from Siemens just to avoid giving money to Arabs.
And those loaded Norwegians.

Americans, apparrently, while in huge numbers, in thrall to Rand/Objectivism
and the Kochs, are not.

------
vitobcn
Denmark is the country within the European union with the highest penetration
of wind power in electricity consumption (almost 26%). However, in absolute
terms both Spain (22 GW) and Germany (29 GW) vastly exceed Denmark (4 GW) and
are two of the largest "wind markets" worldwide (as of end 2011) [1].

In particular, Spain has made a tremendous effort investing in wind energy
(tax incentives, subsidies, etc. were granted), and it's amazing to see that
in about 15 years, this type of energy went from 0 to about 20% of the total
energy produced within the country [2].

Including also the rest of renewables to the mix, it seems obvious that in the
coming 15-20 years, it should be possible to generate more than 50% of energy
from renewable sources, e.g. solar energy in Spain achieved power grid parity
in terms of cost last December [3].

In spite of the current economic downturn, these are pretty amazing times we
are living in!

[1]:
[http://www.ewea.org/fileadmin/ewea_documents/documents/publi...](http://www.ewea.org/fileadmin/ewea_documents/documents/publications/statistics/Stats_2011.pdf)

[2]:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/es/timeline/957d498ae7...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/es/timeline/957d498ae7ff03d7e2b98930deb1c861.png)

[3]:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2012/12/26/solar-g...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2012/12/26/solar-
grid-parity-comes-to-spain/)

~~~
potatos
In the United States we have Iowa, where >24% of electricity last year came
from wind, and where there's more nameplate capacity of wind than the entire
demand of the nation of Denmark.

For what it's worth.

------
oellegaard
> "who are smart enough to pay attention to the accomplishments of this small
> island on the North Sea."

We're not an island* :-(

* We do have 1419 islands, though.

~~~
alexholehouse
That is breathtakingly poor journalism/general knowledge

~~~
bliker
'murica

~~~
adventured
Ah yes, because most people in Denmark know whether Rhode Island is actually
an island or not, and they know all about Oregon (or Oklahoma, or New Mexico
or Nebraska or Ohio).

I don't see how one journalist's mistake leads to that comment.

~~~
mpyne
Because it's considered poor form (if not racist or sexist) to attribute
someone's mistakes on a whole population group... unless the population group
in question is "American".

It's probably a better problem to have than some of the other problems we
might have though.

~~~
jchrisa
I'm totally down with attributing the worst things about America to America as
a whole, even if they show up in other countries. We could use a little
deflation.

------
venomsnake
Also known as a single nuclear reactor. While I am all for renewables the real
problem is storage and buffering. The solutions in these areas are improving
but not nearly as fast as needed.

A cheap supercapacitor with less than 10% daily discharge rate could go a long
way in positioning renewables to shine.

~~~
AndreasFrom
Well, a single nuclear reactor minus the waste that needs to be stored for
thousands of years.

~~~
venomsnake
Hmm ... it was more of a scale comparison, not endorcement of nuclear fission.

But anyway breeders are a partial solution to that problem and we haven't
actually put a lot of effort into the waste disposal.

------
btb
And all those windmill parks are heavily subsidized, which contributes to the
Danish electricity prices being the highest in all of EU[1], 0.3 euro per kwh.
Its basically a state-guaranteed high yield for the pension funds etc that put
them up, paid for by the consumers in DK.

[1]
[http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index....](http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php?title=File:Electricity_prices_for_households_consumers_2012s1.png&filetimestamp=20130219105040)

~~~
snowwindwaves
Wow, that's about 10x more than in USA And Canada (excluding Hawaii and
Kentucky).

I wonder what people would choose given the option between cheap and not from
natural gas, as this is going to be the situation in USA for the next 20 years
due to shale gas

~~~
ams6110
It is very expensive, as are most things in Denmark. My relatives there tell
me that at night they sit in a small room with a candle to avoid running the
lights and heat.

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ok_craig
I'm pretty naive on the science of these things, but I have a concern: is
there any possibility that increasing use of wind energy could have negative
affects on the environment by essentially taking energy out of our atmosphere?
Could our winds gradually slow down over time?

Maybe it's just such a small fraction that it doesn't matter. Or maybe wind
energy is essentially another form of capturing solar energy, because the
winds are created by temperature differences, which are created by the sun
hitting the earth, and that energy is constantly renewed?

I don't know, but I'm curious. Any insight about this would be appreciated.

~~~
adventured
The short answer is: no.

Any windmill impact from changing wind patterns or reducing wind power is
radically less than eg building homes (given we build millions of homes
annually), or simply driving vehicles (of any sort, given the numbers of
vehicles globally).

You could never build enough windmills to cause a problem. The only real
environmental concerns are killing animals (insects?), and construction /
manufacturing related.

~~~
ok_craig
So where does energy from wind hitting a building or a car go? It just
dissipates into the ground?

------
vilda
Just in case you're wondering how a price for energy can be nagative: It is
not. Someone else is paying full price for it. The producer is guaraneed to
always sell the enegry into the grid at a fixed price. The market is broken.

------
Systemic33
Recently when there was a windy weather situation, Denmark produced enough
power from wind turbines to cover 82%[1] of the entire power usage in denmark.

[1] DANISH [http://ing.dk/artikel/vindmoeller-slog-rekord-i-
gaarsdagens-...](http://ing.dk/artikel/vindmoeller-slog-rekord-i-gaarsdagens-
blaesevejr-157196)

------
vitaminj
As a grid engineer, I find the Danish case to be somewhat unique because of
their strong AC and DC interconnections to Germany and Sweden. Basically, they
can free-ride on the large european grid (UCTE), which stretches from Portgual
to Russia, to maintain network stability while increasing domestic wind
penetrations above 50%.

I think a more interesting case study is Ireland, which has far weaker
interconnectors to the UK and operate mainly as an island network. Like
Denmark, they are also trying to integrate large amounts of wind (a goal of
40% by 2020, which is equivalent to over 6GW peak), but unlike Denmark,
Ireland also have to deal with the resulting stability issues.

An EirGrid engineer I spoke to recently mentioned that frequency stability is
already a big issue for them. The main solution proposed in a 2010 study [1]
amounted to maintaining a sufficient operating inertial reserve, which would
potentially mean curtailing wind generation at times. In the future, I would
look to Ireland rather than Denmark for solutions to integrating more wind
into the grid, because they are already at the pointy end of it.

[1] EirGrid Facilitation of Renewables study,
<http://www.eirgrid.com/renewables/facilitationofrenewables/>

------
Bockit
> ...throttle back their hydro plants and store more water behind dams for
> later use.

I find the idea of using a dam as a battery quite interesting.

~~~
oellegaard
I'm pretty sure this is done at a large scale in both Norway, Sweden and
Switzerland. While storing energy have always been a huge problem, I'm
surprised this is not more popular.

~~~
gnaffle
This is correct. Norway exports power in wet seasons, and imports it in dry
seasons. But if there is less rain and dam fill-up than expected, they will
throttle down on production to save the water in order to sell it at a higher
price later on.

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TomGullen
Can someone explain why you would ever pay someone to take surplus power? Is
it because they don't want it To go to waste? Otherwise can't they just get
rid of it somehow?

~~~
david2777
It's not a steady supply over power, it fluctuates with your supply and demand
for it, so it takes work for another grid to take that power from you. If you
send them power they have to scale their plants down to prevent the problem
you're having. Then when your supply goes down and you no longer have an
excess of power to send they have to scale their systems back up to make up
for the power you're no longer sending. They can't store it or get rid of it
easily. It's one of the reasons people don't like wind and solar power, it
works great when the wind is blowing and the sun is out, but it fluctuates too
much and causes heavy swings in power generation that have to be dealt with
somehow.

------
drakaal
Why didn't they just say Gigawatt?

The author couldn't decide on the capitalization of "of" in the title so maybe
they just didn't know 1000 Meg is a Gig.

------
adventured
Maybe this is a dumb question, but isn't there some industrial use that
surplus energy spikes could be used for domestically?

Water desalination perhaps, since it's energy intensive.

~~~
michael_miller
The most compelling use case for excess energy is to store it. There's a big
research area in developing batteries for temporary grid storage. Compared to
standard batteries, the goal is to trade off weight for cost, so that it's
practical to capture the delta between {peak demand, actual demand}. See [1]
for such a battery.

[1]
[http://www.stanford.edu/group/cui_group/papers/Yuan_EES_2013...](http://www.stanford.edu/group/cui_group/papers/Yuan_EES_2013.pdf)

------
muratmutlu
Can someone explain why Denmark would have to pay other countries to take
excess electricity rather than getting paid for it?

~~~
kolinko
There are certain times when there is a surplus of energy in the network
(usually at nights iirc). With a lack of good storage mechanisms, energy
vendors need to actually pay companies to use the energy at certain times.
Otherwise, the energy excess would damage the network.

If Denmark doesn't have enough companies that could take the energy, they have
to send the energy to be used up somewhere else. It's quite likely that at the
same time in other countries a similar situation occurs, so nobody really
wants the extra electricity. Hence Danes need to pay other countries to get
rid of it.

~~~
seunosewa
Can't they just switch off unneeded windmills?

~~~
mpyne
Possibly, but they'd have to be designed to be remotely controlled (possibly
at an individual level). They'd also have to be specifically engineered to
withstand the sudden reduction in countertorque when the windmill is removed
from the grid and then to lock the blades against windmilling while shutdown.
And of course, to reverse the whole process on command.

~~~
ams6110
I would assume the blades can be "feathered" so as to catch very little wind
and not impart a rotational force, as on a prop-drive aircraft when one of the
engines needs to be shut off. There has to be some way to take them out of
services for e.g. maintenance.

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aj700
I'm English. I live in Denmark. Yes, on this, we win:
[https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/rankorder/2240rank.html?countryName=Denmark&countryCode=da&regionCode=eur&rank=1#da)

------
pieter
Off shore wind power is about 25% of the wind power capacity of Denmark, the
rest are 'normal' wind turbines. However, they'll contribute more to the total
energy output. Off-shore wind turbines generate about 35-50% of their maximum
capacity on average, compared to 20-30% of normal wind turbines.

------
mattangriffel
Why did Denmark have to pay other countries to take its excess energy? What am
I not getting here?

~~~
tiredofcareer
Grid oversupply is bad (just as any overpowered circuit is generally bad).
There isn't a way to dump power or store it, so they had to dump it on other
countries who then had to adjust accordingly on _their_ grid. You might think
of it as a nice gesture, but it isn't; the other country has to power off
plants or otherwise adjust to handle the excess as well. There isn't an
"energy garbage can" or dummy load at power grid scale.

Running a power grid is a 24x7 dance of supply and demand, which is why people
that hate renewables like wind are quick to lament its variable nature. It's
the same in high-capacity systems planning in our line of work; systems that
have variable latency are a lot harder to plan capacity for than systems with
fairly constant latency. Just substitute "supply" for "latency", and you're
now a power grid operator.

------
EEGuy
A quick check on wind turbine design for power generation [1] confirms to my
satisfaction that all wind turbines _should be_ throttable down to zero
electrical output and then with good mechanical brakes [2] taking away the
remaining kinetic energy sufficient to stop then lock the rotor. I've read
elsewhere (sorry, no reference) that stopping the rotor can be necessary in
emergency windspeed conditions. Per [2]:

    
    
      >  Let’s compare the emergency braking requirements of a
      >1.5 MW wind turbine under maximum wind conditions with 
      >those of a 40-ton mining truck. Imagine driving a 
      >fully loaded truck down a steep gradient of 25% (1:4)
      >at 85 mph when a road sign warns of a cliff a quarter 
      >mile ahead. The engineering required for effective 
      >braking in both cases is much the same. Braking for 
      >the wind turbine is, in fact, more demanding.
    

Beyond mechanical brakes, the available control strategies and actuators
normally applied toward maximizing power output per [1] can instead be applied
toward bringing the power output to zero and the rotor to a halt, such as:

* Apply generator torque control (dumping power to the grid) sufficient to slow the blades down to near zero

* Then or as the blades slow down, stall or furl the blades using pitch control

* Apply the brakes to lock the rotor

* Yaw the whole machine 90 degrees off the wind

OK so if they're stoppable, what is up here?

Others more familiar with Danish market, operators and regulatory conditions
might speak better to this, but I'll _surmise_ that the turbine operators get
paid when they produce energy, whether Denmark needs it or not. So the turbine
operators never stop their turbines, night nor day.

When that creates an excess of energy the grid engineers must do something.
The article mentioned slowing hydro output elsewhere and heating the water
used locally for district heating.

This creates an environment where there should be a financial incentive to
create technologies for storage or highly variable use of this nightime and
other times highly variable excess electrical energy.

Hundred-megawatt data centers [3] with quickly variable compute capability
come to mind, but making stored hot water hotter (the district heating 'dummy
load' approach) seems to me a lot simpler, cheaper and immediately practical,
if a bit wasteful of the low-entropy energy that electricity is.

\---

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_turbine_design>

[2] <http://news.altramotion.com/?p=242>

[3] [http://gigaom.com/2012/01/31/the-era-of-the-100-mw-data-
cent...](http://gigaom.com/2012/01/31/the-era-of-the-100-mw-data-center/)

------
SmokyBorbon
Only 210 megawatts until Denmark gets time travel.

------
kolinko
Just imagine how many Bitcoins you'd mine with that.

