
The largest offshore wind farm is nearly complete, can power 1M homes - neverminder
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/worlds-largest-wind-farm/index.html
======
pytester
My local constituency was going to achieve this honour but unfortunately the
local MP Robert Syms (known to be somewhat corrupt) killed the project on
utterly bullshit grounds (it would barely have affected the view):
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navitus_Bay_wind_farm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navitus_Bay_wind_farm)

As a contrast, it was also reported today that Hinkley point will be £2.9
billion over budget:
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49823305](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-49823305)
luckily for them, they get to charge £92.50 per megawatt hour upon completion
- locked in for 10 years. While wind power is costing us £40 per megawatt
hour, not guaranteed, and likely to decrease.

~~~
brownbat
Wind farm protests about aesthetics mystify me.

Driving through central Kansas, the towers are just this stark reminder of how
far we've come, and how little we are. You see nothing, nothing, nothing...
then BAM! These massive towers generating energy from the winds on the plains,
in a state named for the people of the south wind. All of them impossibly
tall, the field going on for miles, your mind doesn't even really process how
big an individual one is, let alone the scale of the whole farm.

They always hit me like a monument. Like that feeling you might get walking
into a cathedral with a slow whistle up at the ceiling. It's more than that,
though, it's bundled up with a bit of futurism from the new tech, a bit like
finishing a piece of utopian sci fi at the same time.

There's no accounting for taste, for sure. So maybe some people are just
accustomed to the way certain views used to look and don't want any change.
Maybe they grew up there and have strong attachments.

It's just hard hearing people dismissing beauty as blight, something that
could be sublime if they just looked at it a slightly different way.

~~~
appstorelottery
I worked in wind energy visualisation and attended many community
presentations - I've been up-close to these protests. It's not just about
aesthetics, concerns range from fear of lowered real-estate value, low
frequency health scares, wildlife concerns, shadow flicker and so on. Like
you, I think they are beautiful - however at least here in Holland, that is
generally not the case. I've seen a Vestas V164 in the flesh at a testing
facility in Denmark and it was quite possibly the most incredibly man made
object I've ever seen. With a 164 meter rotor diameter, your eyes almost can't
work out how to focus on the blades - especially if you're standing directly
under it. One moment the blade tip is close to you, and moments later it's 160
meters away. Amazing stuff.

~~~
davedx
Sounds incredible! When I worked for Vandebron we had a visit to a farmer in
North Holland who had 2 wind turbines. They weren't the newer models so not
the biggest, but I indeed remember the crazy feeling of perspective changing
too fast when you looked up at the blades turning from directly underneath. It
was a windy day, too....

I wish I'd been able to go up to the top. Must be amazing!

------
Symbiote
> Just a single rotation of one of the turbines can power the average home for
> an entire day

That is incredible!

~~~
z2
By my power-wasting standards, I use about 8 KWh a day. A max 7 MW(h?) turbine
generates at most 1.94 KWh of electricity a second. It seems to take 3-4
seconds for a single turn. The math checks out and this is, as you say,
incredible.

~~~
driverdan
8 KWh/day is very impressive. How did you get it that low?

~~~
benj111
Is it low? My last bill said I averaged 5kwh/day last month, my February bill
averaged 7kwh/day. That's gas heating and hot water though.

~~~
Symbiote
I have a smart meter in my apartment.

A few weeks ago I was on holiday. Usage was 2.5kWh per day, about 100W, which
is the fridge and a low power PC (NUC).

Otherwise, it's 3-6kWh per day, and depends whether I did laundry and cooked
or not.

District heating and water.

------
growlist
Something many people are not aware of is that the UK is a lucky country in
terms of natural resources, with these resources playing a critical role in
the development of the country over thousands of years. Wind power is just the
latest example, and there's still plenty of resources left underground for the
future, should the economics turn positive.

Somewhat ironically, one factor that has greatly facilitated the development
of offshore wind in the UK is the world leading expertise in offshore
construction gained through decades of exploitation of North Sea oil and gas.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Wind particularly. There are _nine_ licences agreed for farms as large or
larger than Hornsea One, including Hornsea 2 and 3. Another licence round due
in a couple of years, and a lot of coastline to go...

------
opwieurposiu
Wow, a seven-megawatt wind turbine is ~9300 max horsepower.

Looks like the capacity factor is around 38% so the turbines are making
~3500hp avg.

[http://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore-wind-capacity-
factors](http://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore-wind-capacity-factors)

~~~
kerkeslager
This commentary is a bit humorous. Is there some purpose for which the
alternative to using a wind turbine is using a herd of 3500 horses?

"Horsepower" as a unit made sense when it was being used to market steam
engines as an alternative to horses, because it made the tradeoffs obvious:
it's clearly cheaper and easier to maintain steam engine than the 20 horses
needed to do the same work. It might still be relevant for something like
tractors where horses would be a reasonable alternative, but something like
"carbon tons" (the tons of carbon produced by fossil fuel production of the
same electricity) might be a more useful comparison for wind power.

~~~
metalliqaz
horsepower was always just marketing bunk, with no actual work equivalence

~~~
dsfyu404ed
It was a decent approximation of a the level of continuous work output you
could expect out of a horse without taxing it too much.

------
jweir
"On the other hand for offshore wind farms in Denmark the normalised load
factor falls from 39% at age 0 to 15% at age 10."

[https://www.ref.org.uk/attachments/article/280/ref.hughes.19...](https://www.ref.org.uk/attachments/article/280/ref.hughes.19.12.12.pdf)

The title should say has the capacity to power 1M homes. No wind farm ever
generates to capacity. And they age very quickly.

This tech maybe better and last longer than in the quoted, but it will still
degrade over time. So in 10 years maybe it will be 20%?

Wind is not reliable – so where does the power come from when the wind is not
blowing? If you say batteries, then you need excess generation (a lot) and a
lot of batteries.

~~~
konschubert
Wait, they lose 60% of their energy production potential within 10 years?

This number seems unbelievable.

Are the rotors falling off the towers and not getting replaced?

Are you sure that number is correct ?

~~~
llukas
"There are two plausible explanations for the observed decline in average load
factors as wind farms age. The first is that the turbines become less
efficient over time as a result of mechanical wear and tear, erosion of the
turbine blades and related factors. The second is that the turbines experience
more frequent breakdowns and their operators take more time to bring them back
into service because they are less concerned about the performance of older
plants. Both reasons may be relevant in different circumstances and it is not
possible to identify a primary explanation from the data. "

------
tunesmith
So... average household (in America, anyway, don't know about UK) uses a
little more than 10,000 kwh of electricity per year... one kilowatt-hour of
electricity creates 1.1 - 1.2 pounds of carbon dioxide... so each household
emits maybe 6 tons of CO2 per year from electricity usage.

So if this is 1 million homes, that's 6 megatons of CO2 saved per year. The
world emits 37 gigatons per year. So this saves 6/37,000, or ... I just got
depressed.

Every (very little) bit helps, right?

~~~
tlb
Yes, we just need to build about 5000 more of them. Or 2500 wind and 2500
solar. It's possible -- there are lots of facilities we have 5000 of in the
world. For example, there are more than 5000 airports with passenger service,
all built in the last 110 years.

~~~
tunesmith
If you go by number of turbines (which you shouldn't since these are probably
way bigger than average), the US currently has about 325 of these farms.

------
rwmj
The economist had an article about this too:
[https://www.economist.com/britain/2019/09/21/lessons-from-
br...](https://www.economist.com/britain/2019/09/21/lessons-from-britain-the-
worlds-biggest-offshore-wind-market)

------
ChuckMcM
The engineer in me wishes there were more hard numbers, like "what is the
operational cost of the wind farm?"

One of the fun exercises to run would be a win farm that was powering a
submerged data center (so that it could dissipate heat into the ocean).

~~~
foota
The Google data center in Hamina, Finland makes use of seawater for cooling, I
believe.
[https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/hamina/](https://www.google.com/about/datacenters/locations/hamina/)

~~~
driverdan
Google also had experimental sea cooled servers in the bay for a while. I'm
not sure if they're still running that program.

------
nikanj
1M homes, or three bitcoin mining ops.

------
generatorguy
Incidentally this wind farm was the largest contributing factor to the
blackout in London a few weeks ago when it decided to shutdown during a
transient cause by a lightning strike, subsequent transmission line trip, and
200 MW of generation tripping. Then Hornsea wound down 700 MW. Some software
change performed the next day apparently fixed the problem.no details on what
it was though yet, or why the 200MW steam turbine also tripped.

------
NotSammyHagar
It's clear now that we'll be able to power much more of our power needs by
using wind and solar. More 'exotic' schemes today like using the tides might
not even be needed, but we'll see.

------
frankharv
Great spell checking CNN Business. "is located farther out to see than any
other wind farm"

------
psadri
I’m curious what’s the effect of interfering with the wind patterns?

~~~
kerkeslager
Gosh, there are currently 5 responses to your question and every one is pure
speculation.

Folks, if you don't know the answer, don't answer.

~~~
bilbo0s
I don't know man?

In this case, giving the numbers of how much we'd need to harness to have an
effect is pointless. We aren't really in any kind of a place to grasp the
enormity of the numbers. Numbers that big really do become meaningless.

Wind is just second order solar energy. Massive amounts of solar energy make
it to Earth in a given year. I suppose if you must have a number, we can work
in either kWh or BTUs. Won't really make a difference to the enormity of the
outcome though.

For instance, in BTUs, about 80 million british quads of the energy that the
sun gives earth will make it to the surface in a year. (I know the sun
delivers more than 80 million british quads, but I'm not counting the 30% that
gets reflected). Now I'll be nice, and say an additional 10-20% of that is
absorbed by biomass. (It's not, it's way closer to 10%, but I'm being nice.)
And an average American home uses what? say 50 million BTUs a year, (About 12
- 15 thousand kWh), if they're being profligate?

So the wind is coming from the interplay of the solar energy absorbed by
different areas of the ocean and different areas on land. (Another caveat, our
atmosphere can trap some of the energy, which will add to new energy sent by
the sun, and kind of spiral in that fashion. This is what happened to Venus,
which is why they have like 500 mile an hour winds there.) In any case,
ignoring the climate warming, we'd have to find some way to harness enough
wind to make an impact against, say, 20 million british quads of BTUs.

Yeah. That's not gonna happen.

This is what I mean by incomprehensibly massive numbers. Basically, we'd have
to harness enough wind to power roughly 5 billion groups of US homes, where
each group would contain about 1 trillion US homes each. That would be just to
have a _1 percent_ impact on the energy in the winds on this planet in a year.
And the required number goes _up_ with global warming, because more wind.

At this point we're talking monopoly money man. It's meaningless. Again, we
don't have the smarts or technological know how to do anything even close to
that, and don't really have any kind of frame of reference as a species to
meaningfully ponder the implications of such enormous numbers and amounts of
energy. Even thinking about it only makes you consider the smallness of
mankind.

~~~
kerkeslager
_> We aren't really in any kind of a place to grasp the enormity of the
numbers. Numbers that big really do become meaningless._

If that's true, that's all the more reason not to comment.

You're saying we can't grasp the numbers, but apparently you think you can
grasp them well enough to conclude that humans won't have a significant
effect.

If we really can't grasp the numbers, then the only conclusion we can come to
is that we don't know. I think "I don't know" is something that we need to say
more often if we're being honest with ourselves.

 _> For instance, in BTUs, about 80 million british quads of the energy that
the sun gives earth will make it to the surface in a year. (I know the sun
delivers more than 80 million british quads, but I'm not counting the 30% that
gets reflected). Now I'll be nice, and say an additional 10-20% of that is
absorbed by biomass. (It's not, it's way closer to 10%, but I'm being nice.)
And an average American home uses what? say 50 million BTUs a year, (About 12
- 15 thousand kWh), if they're being profligate?

> So the wind is coming from the interplay of the solar energy absorbed by
> different areas of the ocean and different areas on land. (Another caveat,
> our atmosphere can trap some of the energy, which will add to new energy
> sent by the sun, and kind of spiral in that fashion. This is what happened
> to Venus, which is why they have like 500 mile an hour winds there.) In any
> case, ignoring the climate warming, we'd have to find some way to harness
> enough wind to make an impact against, say, 20 million british quads of
> BTUs._

Back-of-napkin math is pretty unconvincing. For example, you made no
mathematical connection whatsoever between the energy from the sun numbers you
were throwing around, and the amount of that that gets converted into wind
energy. You said that 80 million quads of energy hit's the earth from the sun,
so your "20 million British quads of BTUs" is arbitrarily choosing to say that
1/4 of the sun's energy is converted to wind?

So let's sanity check that. quads is a unit of energy E, and E = 1/2 x m x v^2

Now let's convert our numbers into reasonable units and plug them into the
equation. 20 million quads = 2 x 10^7 quads. 1 quad = 1.055 x 10^18 joules[1],
so that's 2.11 x 10^25 joules. The mass of the earth's atmosphere is 5.15 x
10^18 kg[2]. Plugging these numbers into E and m in the equation, we get:

    
    
        E = 1/2 x m x v^2
        2.11 x 10^25 = 1 / 2 x 5.15 x 10^18 x v^2
        2.11 x 10^7 = 1 / 2 x 5.15 x v^2
        4.22 x 10^7 = 5.15 x v^2
        2.1733 x 10^8 = v^2
        14700 = v
    

Just to be clear, joules is kg x m^2 / s^2 and our mass was in kg, so this
velocity is 14700 m/s. You guessed that 20 million quads of the sun's energy
was being converted into wind, but if that were true, the average velocity of
the earth's atmosphere would be 14700 m/s. To be clear, that's the _average_
velocity, and we know that wind isn't uniform throughout the atmosphere, so
some parts would be _faster_. For comparison, the speed of sound in air is 343
m/s.

So yeah, the numbers you are using are incomprehensibly large because they are
wrong, wrong, wrong by a few orders of magnitude.

To be clear, this isn't a criticism of wind power. It's obvious that the clear
and present danger of global warming is a much more pressing concern than
unknown effects of wind power. It's a criticism of people answering questions
they don't know anything about.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_(unit)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quad_\(unit\))

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth)

~~~
kerkeslager
While I was calling you out for essentially making up numbers, I noticed that
my [1] link above contains the global energy consumed in 2004. I decided to
look for more recent numbers, and on this page[1] found that estimated world
energy consumption was 5.67 x 10^20 joules.

Let's convert that to wind speed:

    
    
        E = 1/2 m x v^2
        5.67 x 10^20 = 1 / 2 x 5.15 x 10^18 x v^2
        5.67 x 10^2 = 1/ 2 x 5.15 x v^2
        1.134 x 10^3 = 5.15 x v^2
        2.2 x 10 ^ 2 = v^2
        14.8 = v
    

So we'd expect that if all the world's energy came from wind, it would reduce
wind speed in the world by an average of 14.8 m/s.

For comparison, average wind speed in Chicago, the windy city, from 2010 to
present was 9.9 miles/hour[2] = 4.43 m/s.

Before you lose your calm, and conclude that wind power is evil, let me
reiterate, _back of napkin math STILL shouldn 't convince anyone of anything_.
I'm merely posting this to show that back of napkin math can be used to
calculate much different results.

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

[2] [https://wind.willyweather.com/il/cook-
county/chicago.html](https://wind.willyweather.com/il/cook-
county/chicago.html)

~~~
philipkglass
I think that you missed a time term somewhere. You're looking at global energy
use for an entire year. Don't you want to normalize that to joules used per
time period (i.e. power) before determining how it affects instantaneous-
average wind speeds?

The lowest published estimate I have seen for extractable global wind power
[1] is as little as 18 terawatts in the paper by Miller, Gans, and Kleidon:

"Estimating maximum global land surface wind power extractability and
associated climatic consequences"

[https://www.earth-syst-
dynam.net/2/1/2011/esd-2-1-2011.html](https://www.earth-syst-
dynam.net/2/1/2011/esd-2-1-2011.html)

18 terawatts happens to be _exactly_ equivalent to an annual energy output of
5.67 x 10^20 joules.

18 terawatts is the low end of the estimated range in this paper; the upper
end is 68 terawatts.

[1] The authors only considered wind farms placed on land, perhaps because
offshore wind was so much more expensive in 2011. Their lowest estimate is too
low, even if you stick with the rest of their methodology, after adding
offshore wind.

~~~
kerkeslager
> I think that you missed a time term somewhere. You're looking at global
> energy use for an entire year. Don't you want to normalize that to joules
> used per time period (i.e. power) before determining how it affects
> instantaneous-average wind speeds?

Nope. I may have messed up my calculations somewhere, but I'm quite confident
in my equation (kinetic energy E = 1/2 x m x v^2).

That paper looks pretty interesting, but I'm going to follow my own advice and
admit I don't know: I don't have the background to evaluate the validity of
their atmospheric model. The conclusion[1] is pretty important if it's true.

[1] "Furthermore, we show with the general circulation model simulations that
some climatic effects at maximum wind power extraction are similar in
magnitude to those associated with a doubling of atmospheric CO2. "

~~~
reitzensteinm
Parent is correct. You've calculated that a year of energy consumption is
equivalent to the kinetic energy of the atmosphere moving at 14m/s.

This says nothing about how energy flows through the system, which is what
will determine the impact on wind speeds.

~~~
kerkeslager
> You've calculated that a year of energy consumption is equivalent to the
> kinetic energy of the atmosphere moving at 14m/s.

> This says nothing about how energy flows through the system, which is what
> will determine the impact on wind speeds.

 _shrug_

I'm not gonna teach you guys high school physics. You can look up E =
(1/2)mv^2 in any Physics textbook or your favorite search engine.

Before you disagree further, try calculating this yourself. Look up how to
calculate the final speed of an object from kinetic energy. Make sure you plug
energy units (i.e. joules) into E and power units (i.e. watts) into P. This
isn't hard math, and the necessary equations are all over the internet.

~~~
reitzensteinm
The value you plugged in was a year of energy consumption. Why not a day, or a
century?

If you used the former, it would tell you that wind speed would be reduced by
0.04m/s. If you used the latter, 1.4km/s.

You're not using the equations incorrectly, but they're not telling you what
you think they are.

They are telling you - if we store up all the power use of humanity for this
length of time, then use it to blow the air, how fast will it go.

~~~
kerkeslager
> The value you plugged in was a year of energy consumption. Why not a day, or
> a century?

...because when I pulled the number from wikipedia it said it was the energy
consumption for a year, not for a day or a century.

> You're not using the equations incorrectly, but they're not telling you what
> you think they are.

> They are telling you - if we store up all the power use of humanity for this
> length of time, then use it to blow the air, how fast will it go.

...no, it's telling me if we collect the _energy used by humanity during this
length of time_ , then use it to blow the air, how fast will it go. You cannot
use "energy" and "power" as if they were interchangeable, they are not.

What you may be missing is that these physics equations go both directions. If
we take the blowing of the air and use it to produce the energy used by
humanity during this length of time, we'd expect to see the same _decrease_ in
speed.

~~~
reitzensteinm
There's nothing wrong with my sentence. It might be a bit informal, but "power
use for a length of time" is a quantity of energy.

The decrease in speed you're describing is _one time_ , not continuous. This
is the issue both parent and I are pointing out. It's a shame to me that you
aren't willing to see your error and instead resort to nitpicking, but I'm not
going to try to explain a third time.

------
hexo
How many birds is this going to kill? I've read somewhere it's not that nice
to them.

~~~
rsynnott
Don’t believe everything you read. Bird death from turbines is essentially
nothing next to bird death from hitting buildings, or, worse, cats.

It’s a persistent myth, and recently back in vogue due to the tweeting of a
certain orange personage, but wind farms as bird-destroyers are not worth
worrying about.

~~~
cameronh90
Agree that the wind turbine thing is overblown.

However, according to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, there's
no evidence cats are causing problems for bird populations in the UK at least.

[https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-
wildlife/advice/gardening-...](https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-
wildlife/advice/gardening-for-wildlife/animal-deterrents/cats-and-garden-
birds/are-cats-causing-bird-declines/)

This might be different elsewhere though.

