Floating windfarm

[Andy Burns]

Scottish floating windfarm is being towed to Norway for 3-4 months holid^H^H^H^Heavy maintenance

[Pancho]

Interesting that they can tow them in, although you'd expect them to do it in summer, and probably one at a time.

I think this is the type of wind technology they really need to get to work. It is the technology that scales.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I think you have your head up your green facing arse. This is exactly why we should abandon this sort of technology altogether.

The world is getting sick of the 'any crap as long as it is "green" and we can force the public to pay for it' meme.

[Pancho]

I was happy buying cheap gas from that nice Mr Putin, you were the one wanting to drive up prices, with jingoistic nonsense meddling in a foreign war between Slavs.

It's just five f****ng turbines. It is scientifically interesting. They have run them for five years at close to 50% capacity factor, which is very impressive for a new technology.

There are few technologies that might, possibly, scale as a replacement for fossil fuels. In the UK, offshore wind is one.

We should investigate all potential, realistic, solutions, Fast Breeders, Uranium extraction from seawater, Thorium reactors. Solar is good in much of the world, just not the UK.

[The Natural Philosopher]

A sadly wind is not a 'potential realistic solution'.

And neither is solar.

[Brian Gaff]

How on earth can floating windfarms work. would they not break free from their moorings or sink?Brian

[alan_m]

These are single wind turbines with 78 metres of the structure below the water and with 3 anchors.

The tower supporting the generator is 98 metres above the water and the

3 blades are each 77 metres in length

[Paul]

Like an iceberg, a lot of the mass is below the water line.

There are three mooring lines, on each one.

For example, section 1.3.3 "Spar Substructure"

as this thing is a spar design. Each windy mill has a cylinder underneath, the bottom of the cylinder has ballast, the top of the cylinder has air, and this gives a good (low) center of gravity and makes the structure "self-righting". The three mooring lines stabilize the position.

The wind farm needs to be offshore, so there is clearance underneath the spar. Then if the spar moves, or heaves from side to side, it does not strike the bottom. The mooring lines control the position. But the mooring lines are going to move a bit, if there is a sea running.

Inspecting the condition of the mooring lines, will be part of the maintenance. I can't imagine it would be too healthy for the scheme, to lose a mooring line. The device would drift, until the two mooring lines were slack.

Paul

[Chris Hogg]

The so-called Wave Hub, located off the Cornish coast, was set up by Cornwall Council to act as a facilitator for firms wishing to develop wave generation technologies. It was a total disaster: not a single firm took advantage of it's facilities and not a single watt of electricity was transmitted to the shore. The project was financed by the South West Regional Development Agency (£12.5 million), the European Regional Development Fund (£20 million) and the UK government (£9.5 million)

So much for wave generation technology, starting with Salter's Duck in the 1970's. Nobody has made a success of it in the last fifty years, and never will. Plenty of research money spent though.

The Wave Hub was eventually sold to the Swedish floating wind farm developer Hexicon for them to test their designs. How much they paid for it is not disclosed but the UK taxpayer must have been many millions out of pocket.

Hexicon have a twin-turbine arrangement on a triangular floating platform.

[Animal]

Under 50% is impressive? What capacity factor do nukes do? Wind has no realistic prospect of getting good in this respect simply because the wind so often doesn't blow enough. There's no real prospect of that changing.

Scaled up, no. We need reliable electricity, so every megawatt of unreliable gen has to be backed up by a megawatt of fossil gen. So what windmills achieve is the use of a large amount of extra unnecessary resources, fuel, money & consequent pollution. And they waste a huge amount of manpower that could be used to solve real problems.

On a small scale they just might have a place. High wind increases electrical heating load, so a little wind generation might be useful if it gets economical enough.

That wipes out wind. Nuclear looks like a winner, afaik it doesn't need investigating.

Unreliable generation can only be good on a small scale. Where ac adds sunny day loading, perhaps. Where output can be stored as hot water, perhaps. On a larger scale it gets counterproductive.

[Andrew]

Provided you are happy to start with basic uranium ore that is located in countries that have an unpleasant reputation for probity and/or human rights.

[Andrew]

And the Russians have a submarine that is specifically made to interfere with subsea telecoms cables so presumably mooring cables would be a nice easy target too

[Chris Hogg]

AIUI nuclear waste from power stations contains about 90% recoverable nuclear fuel, so no need to use uranium ore as long as you have the facilities to reprocess the waste. Do we still have THORP?

[Clive Arthur]

I imagine they're rather thicker, but still doable I suppose. The anchoring technology has been around for a good while with semi submersible oil rigs.

[Clive Arthur]

<snip>

Any downsides associated with nuclear power are usually ignored by their proponents. Just like happens with wind, or anything really.

[Pancho]

The USA spent over 1 billion dollars buying uranium from Russia last year. I imagine that isn't something they like doing.

[Andy Burns]

Canada, Australia?

[The Natural Philosopher]

I've never heard Cornwall described like that.

Nor Canada.

Or the USA.

As usual the ArtStudent mind fails to grasp the finer detail of cost accounting and geology.

Uranium is everywhere, including the sea. There are four billion tonnes in the worlds oceans. Extractable at an estimated $200/lb, or about 4 times current market price, that would add another 2p to the cost of nuclear electricity.

It's just a matter of what you are prepared to pay for it. Since the contributory cost of uranium to the electricity cost is about

0.5p a unit, there is considerable scope for more expensive uranium ore to be used before the power station becomes uneconomic.

And of course a fast breeder uses far less uranium or thorium. But costs more to build.

All of the options are far cheaper overall than a grid based on 'renewables' .

[The Natural Philosopher]

There's 10 years of plutonium up at Sellafield that can be mixed with spent fuel rod U238 to make standard reactor fuel. Or mixed with thorium as an 'igniter'

Canada and the USA are self sufficient in Uranium

Australia has the largest known deposits of high grade ore.

[The Natural Philosopher]

There are no downsides.