As a fun aside, the largest offshore wind farm in the world has just been opened off the UK's east coast. Just a single rotation of one of the 174 turbines can provide an average house with its electricity needs for a day.
Is the headline figure here actually kind of small?
| The IEA finds that global offshore wind capacity may increase 15-fold and attract around $1 trillion of <<cumulative>> investment by 2040.
Averaged over the next 20 years, that's $50 billion per year, or 2.5 percent of oil and gas revenues in 2017[0], or 7 percent of what was invested in oil and gas supply in 2016[1]. I could be thinking about this wrong but it seems like there numbers could have been much more encouraging.
With solar penetration increasing fast, and so much wind potential, it’s almost impossible not to transition off of fossil fuels rapidly. The economics are just too good to ignore. Storage isn't even an issue; we'll overbuild renewables and curtail as needed, which is cheap now (under 2 cents/kwh) and works until batteries come down in cost (which will happen).
How many offshore wind farms are there in the US? I heard a radio story a while back about some homeowners in New England pushing back against a proposed wind farm for aesthetic reasons -- not a surprising development but I must say I didn't consider it when thinking about proliferation of turbines.
Repealing environmental and permitting laws that allow powerful and wealthy beachfront property landowners to block wind installations is critical toward converting to a green economy.
As of September 2019, the American Wind Energy Association claims there is only one. [1]
> The U.S. currently has one operational offshore wind project with many more on the way. The nation’s first commercial offshore wind project, the Block Island Wind Farm, came online in December 2016. Developed by Deepwater Wind, the Block Island Wind Farm is a 30 megawatt (MW) project with five turbines located three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island.
> According to the Department of Energy, the U.S. has a total project pipeline of 25,434 MW of offshore wind energy as of June 2018. This pipeline includes 3,892 MW of project-specific capacity and 21,542 MW of undeveloped lease area potential capacity. Out of this pipeline, project developers have announced that roughly 2,000 MW of new offshore wind capacity is expected to be operational by 2023. States including Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have completed solicitations for nearly 1,770 MW of offshore wind energy, and additional soliciations are planned for the near future.
> The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued twelve active commercial wind energy leases to date. Another four projects have submitted unsolicited lease applications to BOEM, while four demonstration projects have obtained exclusive development rights to a site from federal or state authorities. While a majority of the nearer-term activity is concentrated in the Atlantic off the Northeast coast, projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, in the Pacific off of California and Hawaii, and the Great Lakes.
> With stable policies in place, the Department of Energy found the U.S. could develop a total of 22 GW of offshore wind projects by 2030 and 86 GW by 2050. As we continue to develop this homegrown resource, costs will continue to drop, value to consumers will grow, and the U.S. will see new jobs and investments in manufacturing and port infrastructure.
> I heard a radio story a while back about some homeowners in New England pushing back against a proposed wind farm for aesthetic reasons
That is practically a non-issue with offshore wind. (Yeah, sometimes you can see them from the cost, but really small usually because they're too far out.)
When you look this up, you find more estimates than actuals. Wikipedia shows world offshore wind capacity at 18GW as of 1997. If that's nameplate capacity, average output is less, maybe half. There are at least 10 individual nuclear plants in the world with 4GW output or more.
Offshore wind is cheap, but you need dispatchable power or really big batteries somewhere. Tesla's big battery in Australia is about 129MWH. That's enough storage to replace a 12 hour wind lull for 5 large offshore turbines. The battery to wind turbine ratio needs to increase if wind power provides a large fraction of energy.
Out of curiosity, what would happen to you if you were swimming in the water nearby and a transmission cable was exposed to seawater? What path would the electricity take in the vastness of open sea?
There would be no electricity, since the automatic safety systems should detect such a failure and break the circuits, similar to what should happen if a cable fails in your bathroom. But assume not, to make it interesting. The way of shortest resistance is probably still through the cable. Or it would all go into the ground. I doubt that there would be any danger to a swimmer (that is not too close). Note that such cables are buried in the ground to protect them, or rocks are deposited on top of them.
How much time have you spent underwater? Such schemes are totally unrealistic maintenance nightmares due to corrosion, encrustation, storms, and difficulty of site access.
> Heat lost to the water (maybe half of the energy input to compressed air) could be reclaimed as the pressure is released, with simple heat exchangers.
Heat lost to the water is lost. If you want to try to avoid that you need to save that heat energy after the compression stage.
[+] [-] kitd|6 years ago|reply
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/25/business/worlds-largest-w...
[+] [-] achow|6 years ago|reply
The size comparison: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/newpix/2018/06/13/14/4D2F6ADC000...
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] pithymaxim|6 years ago|reply
| The IEA finds that global offshore wind capacity may increase 15-fold and attract around $1 trillion of <<cumulative>> investment by 2040.
Averaged over the next 20 years, that's $50 billion per year, or 2.5 percent of oil and gas revenues in 2017[0], or 7 percent of what was invested in oil and gas supply in 2016[1]. I could be thinking about this wrong but it seems like there numbers could have been much more encouraging.
[0] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/030915/what-percent... [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iea-energy-investment/ele...
[+] [-] tim333|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] achow|6 years ago|reply
But the maximum potential for offshore wind production is more than 120,000 gigawatts, or 11 times projected global electricity demand in 2040..
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 40acres|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javagram|6 years ago|reply
Repealing environmental and permitting laws that allow powerful and wealthy beachfront property landowners to block wind installations is critical toward converting to a green economy.
[+] [-] notadog|6 years ago|reply
> The U.S. currently has one operational offshore wind project with many more on the way. The nation’s first commercial offshore wind project, the Block Island Wind Farm, came online in December 2016. Developed by Deepwater Wind, the Block Island Wind Farm is a 30 megawatt (MW) project with five turbines located three miles off the coast of Block Island, Rhode Island.
> According to the Department of Energy, the U.S. has a total project pipeline of 25,434 MW of offshore wind energy as of June 2018. This pipeline includes 3,892 MW of project-specific capacity and 21,542 MW of undeveloped lease area potential capacity. Out of this pipeline, project developers have announced that roughly 2,000 MW of new offshore wind capacity is expected to be operational by 2023. States including Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut have completed solicitations for nearly 1,770 MW of offshore wind energy, and additional soliciations are planned for the near future.
> The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) has issued twelve active commercial wind energy leases to date. Another four projects have submitted unsolicited lease applications to BOEM, while four demonstration projects have obtained exclusive development rights to a site from federal or state authorities. While a majority of the nearer-term activity is concentrated in the Atlantic off the Northeast coast, projects have also been proposed off the Southeast coast, in the Pacific off of California and Hawaii, and the Great Lakes.
> With stable policies in place, the Department of Energy found the U.S. could develop a total of 22 GW of offshore wind projects by 2030 and 86 GW by 2050. As we continue to develop this homegrown resource, costs will continue to drop, value to consumers will grow, and the U.S. will see new jobs and investments in manufacturing and port infrastructure.
[1] https://www.awea.org/Awea/media/About-AWEA/U-S-Offshore-Wind...
[+] [-] hannob|6 years ago|reply
That is practically a non-issue with offshore wind. (Yeah, sometimes you can see them from the cost, but really small usually because they're too far out.)
[+] [-] Animats|6 years ago|reply
Offshore wind is cheap, but you need dispatchable power or really big batteries somewhere. Tesla's big battery in Australia is about 129MWH. That's enough storage to replace a 12 hour wind lull for 5 large offshore turbines. The battery to wind turbine ratio needs to increase if wind power provides a large fraction of energy.
[+] [-] dev_dull|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prof_mm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sbhn|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] Gabriel_Martin|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ncmncm|6 years ago|reply
Heat lost to the water (maybe half of the energy input to compressed air) could be reclaimed as the pressure is released, with simple heat exchangers.
[+] [-] nradov|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thehappypm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gns24|6 years ago|reply
Heat lost to the water is lost. If you want to try to avoid that you need to save that heat energy after the compression stage.
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|6 years ago|reply