- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- climate@slrpnk.net
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Each rotation of the first turbine’s 107-metre-long blades can produce enough clean energy to power an average home for two days.
I’ve never read this sort of description of the amount of energy things produce before. That’s very cool.
HARD disagree. You can make anything sound terrible or impressive this way, by changing the comparison point.
Honestly if they said “for 6 hours” rather than “for two days”, would the effect not have been the exact same? Still sounds extremely impressive! Yet it’s a 400% difference. The number they give is not a useful metric at all, it just sounds nice.
Such literary tactics are used all the time to make things sound good or bad, regardless of any kind of “objective” merit.
Often it’s clueless journalists copy/pasting these “layman’s comparisons” from marketing material, without contextualizing or giving hard numbers. That’s extremely misleading and blindly plays into the marketer’s/politician’s hands.At least this article gives hard figures (13 MW/turbine, 3.6 GW total, which is honestly most of the substance of the article) as well as an actually relevant comparison for the layman (2.5x more powerful than the previous biggest power plant in the UK). Which is good (both the numbers themselves and the article including them).
Anyway sorry for the rant but as someone with an interest in renewables, I see too much of this shitty journalistic practice. I guess it can be neat, but at best it’s eye-catching but not actually useful information, and at worst it is just outright propaganda.
Pretty staggering statistic, offset by a disappointing lifespan for the entire project. Hopefully engineering in 35 years will have the best of both worlds. Bet you my electricity bill will still be high regardless 🤣
Hey this is a pretty common misconception! Project lifespan here is used like a financial term, not an engineering one. It’s cost of initial project + maintainance and other costs, compared to energy generation $ minus energy losses over time from equipment degrading. Infrastructure requires maintenance and replacement, and 35 years here is kind of a “best by” guarantee.
Also, 35 years is actually a pretty long time! From now, that’s 2058; looking backwards, that’s 1988. Take a look at what wind turbine engineering looked like in 1988 and the difference to modern equipment is enormous. 35 years is a full generation of people: someone 18 today will be 53 when this project needs refurbishment.
This is a really exciting project (I think the article quoted some 5% total energy generation for the UK? That is truly insane) and I don’t think that excitement should be outweighed by pretty mundane lifespan number! This much clean energy is awesome, will be present for a long long time, and get recycled and rebuilt when it has run its course.
And of course it’s worth noting that it almost sets a precedent. In 35 years it’ll be much easier to upgrade the project then it would be to get a new project off the ground 35 years from now, if one hadn’t already been initiated at that location. People will be on board with maintaining infrastructure, far more than they will be on board with creating any new infrastructure. Even if functionally the costs end up being the same.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Dogger Bank wind farm, located in the North Sea off the UK’s Yorkshire coast, has installed the first of a planned 277 turbines.
“Dogger Bank will provide a significant boost to UK energy security, affordability and leadership in tackling climate change,” said Alistair Phillips-Davies, chief executive of SSE Renewables - the project’s lead developer, in partnership with Norway’s Equinor and Vårgrønn.
The mega-project is expected to bring long-term jobs, economic growth and energy security to nearby South Tyneside and beyond.
When complete, the giant wind farm will take up an area almost the size of Greater London, making it the world’s largest of its kind.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has faced sharp criticism in recent weeks for rolling back green initiatives, has hailed the news as a success.
“It’s fantastic to see the world’s largest wind farm, Dogger Bank, generating power for the first time today from UK waters, which will not only bolster our energy security, but create jobs, lower electricity bills and keep us on track for Net Zero,” he said.
The original article contains 521 words, the summary contains 175 words. Saved 66%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
On completion, the wind farm is expected to be operational for 35 years
That seems super short?
It’s in the North Sea, pretty hostile environment for anything manmade. Oil rigs in the same area have an expected lifetime of 25 years.
That’s true - I was thinking about that after I posted since it’s a salt-water environment and things will likely corrode over time.
This is a typical “lifespan” of these types of projects, that is to say, the lifespan where it produces sufficient amounts of energy versus the degradation of the equipment to justify upkeep costs (which may be greater for offshore wind than on-shore). It’s not going to break down over night after 35 years, it could go 50 or even more, but at lower energy production. The other reason for these lifespan calculations is that, in 35 years, the technology may far out pace what is currently installed in likely a prime location, and maybe local energy demands have changed. If that’s the case, a “repower” may occur where existing infrastructure is adapted to new equipment which produces far more energy.
Makes sense - I did some searching on other project lifespans and they do seem similar (actually this seems on the longer-end of the range).
That’s just the lifespan of a typical wind turbine. Most last less than that.
But then Trawsfynydd nuclear power station was only operational for 26 years. The coal station up the road from me has been going for 55 years, but who know how much of the original guts of that remain.
In any case £9bn for 35 years of clean power seems like a bargain.
Seems like the answer is yes because this is how they’re making it - is it more efficient to generate power with one giant turbine vs a bunch of smaller turbines of equivalent volume?
Yes, it is. Because the area of wind that a turbine can capture is pi*r^2, (where r is the length of the blades), the area increases with the square of the blade length. So doubling blade length gives you four times the wind area.
I suspect it’s certainly cheaper overall.
Building at sea isn’t cheap, even in shallower waters. Fewer big foundations is going to be easier than many smaller ones.
