New Scottish offshore wind farm starts generating

[dan_b]

https://electrek.co/2022/08/23/worlds-d ... hore-wind/
https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... e-windfarm

Several interesting firsts on this wind farm it would seem
First use of 10MW turbines in Europe
Deepest sea-bottom fixed foundations so far
will be fully commissioned next Summer. (could do with them hurrying up with that I think!)

[ecogeorge]

Guess there's no link anywhere to see actual output ?? appreciate they are unfinished tho .........be nice to see what wind farm producing what where ?
George

[dan_b]

The Crown Estate has a rather cool live interactive map of offshore wind farms that shows size, capacity, number and type of turbines, wind speed and current generating power, but this one's not on it yet

Follow the below link and then click on "Offshore Wind Energy"
https://www.thecrownestate.co.uk/en-gb/ ... asset-map/

[GarethC]

Amazing that the industry is already moving on to 15MW and 16MW turbines. There must be quite a simple rule of thumb which explains what happens to the levelised cost of electricity as turbine size increases. Anyone know what it is? It must be significant or manufacturers wouldn't be bothering.

I'm fairly sure the recent offshore wind auction results were predicated on the current generation of circa 12MW turbines. Iirc the strike price was around £46 per MWh in current price terms - I. E. Subsidy free based on long term average wholesale electricity prices, and what would be a massive net contributor given the current spike.

Would be great to understand how much lower this might go using next gen turbines. And also what we can expect for capacity factors, which are much higher for latest farms, with implications for storage requirements.

[dan_b]

I think the rule of thumb is quite simply - bigger is better.

Access to stronger more consistent wind flow for greater generation time, with greater swept area permitting higher generation power in a wider range of wind speeds. This then means you can install fewer turbines for the same overall planned capacity.

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2021/08/20 ... d-turbine/

This 16MW turbine produces 45% more energy over time than an its 11MW predecessor. That's a huge increase per machine.

[Oldgreybeard]

I suspect the economics of installing wind turbines at sea also means that it doesn't cost much more to install really big ones than it does to install smaller ones, as I bet a fair bit of the cost is not dependent on the size of the turbine.

[Mart]

I suspect the economics of installing wind turbines at sea also means that it doesn't cost much more to install really big ones than it does to install smaller ones, as I bet a fair bit of the cost is not dependent on the size of the turbine.

I don't know if this old 'rule' still stands, but I recall reading that about 40% of the cost of an offshore windfarm is the grid expansion, buildout of the electrical component (those oil rig like structures) and the monopiles. So I assume all of those costs, even allowing for a larger diameter monopile will be roughly unchanged. And any increase in the cost of a larger WT, might be offset (or largely offset) by the reduced number needed.

Small tangent, but that 40% figure bodes well for the future, since it suggests that when a windfarm needs replacing, then hopefully it will only incur (again) the 60% related to the WT's themselves, so a reduction in cost, assuming that the same monopiles can be reused, but even if not, I'm sure the existing electrical build out will reduce costs significantly.

Edit - Additional thought, many of the European strike prices (such as Germany) are lower than UK CfD strike prices, because they don't include the cost of building out the grid to the RE development (this is funded under a separate mechanism). This difference is about 20%. So from that, we can safely assume that 20% of the UK CfD cost won't be repeated for future refurbishments.