Thursday, May 23, 2013
Sally Bakewell, Bloomberg
October 29, 2012
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6 Comments
London Array, the largest offshore wind park approved in the world, produced its first power as backers Dong Energy A/S, Masdar Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co. and EON AG seek to curb technology costs by building at scale.
The first 630-megawatt phase of the venture in the Thames Estuary will produce enough power for more than 470,000 homes when completed at the end of the year, the companies said today in a joint statement. The facility has approval for 1 gigawatt of turbines at the site off the Kent and Essex coasts.
Developers of offshore wind are planning projects with more turbines to help lower the costs of the technology, among the most expensive of renewable sources. It costs 161 euros ($208) to produce a megawatt-hour of offshore wind power, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The U.K. government is trying to get that down to 100 pounds ($161) a megawatt-hour by 2020.
“Being able to efficiently develop large offshore wind farms and harvest the scale advantages in both construction and operation is an important element in our continuous efforts to bring down costs of energy of offshore wind,” Benj Sykes, U.K. wind manager at Danish utility Dong, said in the statement.
EON U.K. Chief Executive Officer Tony Cocker said the project would help achieve a goal of cutting costs 40 percent by 2015. Dong owns 50 percent, EON 30 percent and Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s renewable energy initiative, 20 percent, with 151 turbines now installed, according to the statement.
Copyright 2012 Bloomberg
Lead image: UK offshore wind turbines via Shutterstock
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November 3, 2012
The wind farm described is in the UK not the USA. The USA specific studies often do not work for other countries. Most of the European countries have signed the Kyoto agreement and have made it a priority to reduce CO2 - for lots of reasons including that much of their shoreline is at risk of flooding. Even if you believe that CO2 produced by human activities doesn't result in global warming and raising sea levels, there still remains that fact that nearly 100 years ago the CO2 level was around 290ppm, now it is at 380+ ppm and by best estimates (and consensus of many scientists) the estimates for CO2 maybe above 650ppm by 2050 or later if serious intervention doesn't occur. Try to stay awake in meetings with CO2 that high!
Old reports and studies from 2009 are just that -- they are old. If you carefully read the studies by the Denmark government, they know quite well that their use of coal would not drop off immediately in 2009. The Germans and other Europe countries also understand that AND have the continued use of coal in their plans -- for a while. They recognize that the wind, solar and storage of significant size must be in place before they can start chopping of large portions of coal production. Germany has been shutting down the nuclear plants FIRST then is planning on shutting down the fossil fuel plants.
In the USA we have entirely different economics and reasons for deploying the renewables at a different pace. For most of Europe the choice is to import oil from abroad, import natural gas from Russia, continue nuclear (and German nuclear plants have had accidents as well) or level entire villages so they can strip mine coal. Sounds harsh but that is their energy environment.
Renewables in Europe provide energy independence from Russia, the middle east and the USA. Unfortunately the world no longer views the USA as necessarily the nicest people without hidden agendas.