Stormy Waters Ahead for Offshore Wind 

Great discussion, Angelica did a superb job of explaining the options and downsides. I worked as a marine engineer for 10 years, building technology that operate reliably and be serviceable in a marine environment is really hard. IMO building offshore wind farms is hard^2 and costly^3, it makes no sense to me and the costs of interconnection are also extreme, requiring submarine cables and usually HVDC converter stations at each end, it's all $$$.

Pretty much says it -- "wind" infrastructure - based in the physical world, the "easy" wind has been captured, off-shore is increasingly expensive - add supply chains and the uncertainties impacting the cost of capital - AND then the wind doesn't blow . . . Read a bit just this past week saying $4.1 TRILLION had been spent on renewables in the last 30 years -- what if we had spent that sum on nuclear instead ?

"Let's take wind, which is already uneconomical, and put it in the corrosive, abrasive, inaccessible environment of the ocean. That will make it even cheaper!"

She is very knowledgeable.

Offshore oil hasn't decreased in price these last 20 years, hard to see why offshore wind would be different.

Are wind turbines reducing windspeeds and reducing moisture content, causing Dunkleflaute and drought ?

Taking the clue from Rosie's Engineering and adding it to this series, offshore wind or solar energy collectors are even less effective than onshore non generators, and it's way past time people in responsible positions did something about the absolute atrocities inherent in first strike nuclear weapons and recognised the absolute defensive necessity of nuclear power generation.

Thank you for your work!

Off shore everything, especially maintenance, costs 5 times what it costs on land.

280m is 20m shy of a supertall skyscraper. That's massive!

Clipper ships hit a limit on length; locomotives hit a scaling limit as well in terms of size; airplanes too. The only thing that hasn't yet is Moore's Law. Wind has hit it already...

How much of (cheap) manufacturing is based on carbon energy? Renewables is a misnomer - they are replaceable and cost is a poor measure of whether they add to or reduce planetary pollution. And where manufacturing is offshore, the Global North ignores its impact. That lack of accountability for the supply chain has to change.

This is quite interesting *****Five 550 kW WindWorld turbines, installed in 1998, off the coast of the island of Gotland, Sweden were re-commissioned in 2018, after undergoing an extensive technological and mechanical upgrade by Momentum Gruppen. The project included the replacement of nacelles, blades, and control systems using newly refurbished parts from five Vestas V47-600 kW. The towers, the foundations, and the subsea cables all passed an extensive durability test. The result was that the turbine’s lifetime was extended by 15 years, and the expected yearly output was doubled from ca. 5,000 MWh to ca. 11,000 MWh.***** Offshore wind is going to be like nuclear with potentiality multiple life extensions that add decades and decades Design for 30 year 'life' The refurbish and extend for another 20 Then refurbish and extend for another 20 The refurbish and extend for another 20 years...... You can probably design the tower and foundations and transmission and distribution to last multi hundred years. The rest youd refurbish/repalace every 20 years at a fraction of the cost as you're only repalcing a fraction of the parts that make up the system Offshore wind is going to be a lot like hydropower. If you have good wind resources once developed, it'll just keep on going and have a quasi infinite life

27:48 are current WT being built whilst trying to cut costs, if the previously ones ( in service for 20 years) are holding up better than expected! Thank you for uploading and sharing.

The UK is aiming for ~70% offshore wind by 2030 which is only 7 years from now (and some 10% from onshore wind on top of this so 80% combined onshore and offshore) We do have enough space to do it almost exclusively from fixed bottom but we will invest in floating offshore wind because they allow a vast more area to be used and can potentially be positioned in even winder locations so the hivher production will make up for the higher costs or at least beidge the differential The biggest factor most people aren't aware of is that far from land offshore locations like the dogger bank using the most upto date turbines are projected to have 60% capacity factors which is gettong close to the French nuclear fleet which is typically 70% capacity factor

Its approx 50kg/meter for a 1GW HVDC line and a large part of the cost of an offshore wind farm is the grid links This isnt that negative a thing as HVDC links have very long lives for example the one between the uk and france was built 38 years ago and it will likely still be operational in another 38 years and then another..... This means when wind farms come to the end of their lives in 30 years time. The costly grid connection is still operational that alone will lilely mean the repalcement wind farm in 30 years time will be 1/3rd cheaper. In fact its quite possible the foundation and tower will be okay in which case it might just be the generator and wind blades that need replacing. If that is the case only about 25% of the wind farm needs replacing so in theory the replacement wind farm in 30 years time might only cost 25% of the original build So far there hasnt been this type of rebuild but thats becuase a new wind turbine is 50x better than the 20 year old ones so they havent reused but deoloyed new tech. But at some point the world will settle on a certian size and a few designs so in the very kong term it will likely be a matter of onky reoalcing 25-50% of the wind farm every 30 years at 25-50% of the original cost

Floating is not new technology; they have been using it on oil rigs for years also the bigger the turbine the bigger the swept area increasing its power generation capacity and once you have established the grid to shore connection the reduction in cost per kwh reduces. As for the fishing industry, their record for destroying the environment is second to none.

The offshore wind turbine is only ~1/3rd of the total cost of an offshore wind farm The infrastructure to send that power onshore sometimes 300km distance is actually a very big part of the cost of an offshore wind farm If we look at the IFA2 interconnector it cost the best part of $1 billion for a 210km interconnector A 1GW offshore wind farm in Europe costs ~$4 billion so 25% of the cost is the electricity transmission infrastructure. While the turbines are about 30% of the cost and the other 45% are other costs like inter array cabling permitting planning insurance etc etc Anyways The electricity transmission infrastructure once built has a long life eg there is a 40 year interconnector between france and the UK and it'll be around in 40 years' time too So even if you assume zero cost and technology improvements over the next 25 years once the wind farm is at end of life itll cost 25% less to renew it for another 25 years as you dont need to pay for the transmission infrastructure twice I would also imagine repalcing a 15MW offshore wind turbine with a new 15MW turnine in 25 uears time probably wont cost as much as you can provably reuse the foundations the tower the inrerarray cables etc If an offshore wond farm costs €70/MWh today its replacement in 25 years time will likely be closer to €40/MWh and thats assuming no progeess in the core technology itself which seems unlikely Once an offshore wind farm is built id wager like a hydropower station it'll have a quasi infinite lifetime at low prices

I just want to be sure that I understand capacity. Let’s say a capacity of 35%. So for. 15GW turbine does that mean (15GW X 24 hrs X 365 days) X 35% ?

Was the movie Pandora's Box or Pandora's Promise in South Korea?

I really appreciate Angelica for her knowledge on the taiwanese offshore wind market. However, I feel like she wasn't very knowledgeable on the state of the art offshore wind in Europe and therefore was unable to defend some of Chris' questions. Also, Chris while very knowledgeable in nuclear is clueless of the current state of technology in renewables. I felt like this podcast did not add much value, it cited a lot of the challenges we are facing in the industry (good) but it left a lot of open questions and did not inform much about the advantages and achievements of offshore wind. I will try to answer some 05:00 - Sure Angelica, on LCOE charts PV is costing down faster than any other technology. But, as it has been made clear in this podcast time and time again in defence of nuclear, LCOE is not everything and offshore wind has much higher capacity factors than PV and the generation profile compliments PV really well in some markets. Therefore the value per MW installed it adds is superior to PV. 11:00 - The industry is working on technologies that eliminate the noise almost completely by not using hammers. I can assure you we go above and beyond to avoid injuring animals and we have super strict legislation in many countries. 15:00 - There is a lot of space in the fixed-bottom range yet to be used in the North Sea. A lot. Some areas might need floating but we can install for the next 10 years and still have space left. Thus, these targets are aimed at fixed-bottom mostly. 25:00 Angelica cites interest rates as hurting wind and she is right, but it affects any technology that is capital intensive. Guess which technology's is the most capital intensive, yep, nuclear. If my WACC has increased in offshore wind for the UK imagine Sizewell C... 30:00 Chris asks about capacity factors, Angelica is unable to answer but in the UK, the existing fleet averages at 42-39% currently. Coming offshore wind farms will be at 45-60% range. Pretty good for wind if you ask me. 35:00 - Chris needs to get informed about renewables... In PV and wind both onshore and offshore we have O&M crews allocated to do maintain periodically. Sure, we don't need to build a town next to the nuclear power plant as it used to be the case for remote power plants. But we rely on local community by creating O&M hubs in a coastal town that services a cluster of wind farms and then we have vessels where the technicians spend up 2 weeks offshore (then they get two weeks off), and/or we fly them in helicopters. 40:00 - Chris asks about jobs. Well it is similar to any other industry. High qualified jobs are based wherever revelan university hubs are or there are existing tech hubs (big cities and near existing offshore oil and gas hub). Some qualified jobs are outsourced that can be done remote are outsourced to cheaper labor countries such as Spain, Greece, India, Malasia, etc. Manufacturing is done as close to the construction site as possible, transport is very expensive. Then O&M is all local. I could go on longer but I have a life :) FWIW, I do work developing large (multi-GW) offshore wind projects. My background is power systems engineering and I wanted to specialise in nuclear as a student, but after doing some systems modelling (technical and economic) ended up accepting that renewables have their limitations but can be cheap. Heck, for many countries having a high penetration of renewables is the cheapest option, even if you count for system costs. In any case I still believe nuclear has its space and I am supporter of it.

The wind industry like the nuclear industry is fairly young and every new design is an improvement over the last. This type of iteration is to be expected and encouraged in both industries. Leaving aside farming very low density, intermittent wind is just plain dumb.

She said she doesn't know the capacity factor. The current existing UK newer wind farms have a capacity factor of 45% the next Gen wind farms due 2025 will have 60% capacity factor due to better wind locations (further out to sea) and bigger higher up turbines reaching higher wind speeds

Did I hear you right, the impact on birds was almost dismissed as an inevitable consequence. So save the polar bear but killing birds is ok?

Cost of offshore maintenance is astronomical....coal is king

smart gal...

Does she has twitter?

12:44 12:45 *Dogger Bank.* _Doggerel_ is bad poetry.

Industrialisation of your landscape is not an achievement

3📍21:02

Your guest regrettably - by her own admission - does not understand power density. This parameter is fundamental to understanding why grid scale wind is a bad idea. Wind is a 1 W/m2 technology. Conventional thermal power plant is a 1500+ W/m2 technology. So the land/surface use is three orders of magnitude larger for wind. This is why it is more expensive and why people are looking to China or Indonesia for manufacturing wind turbines --- these are economies fueled by coal. So in the end what does a wind turbine with enormous embedded CO2 achieve --- absolutely nothing --- in fact it is harmful in terms of environmental impact. One comment on the technical aspects --- wind turbines have a theoretical power limit of around 59% which is the the maximum they can extract from the available wind. Actual values are around 40% for the best turbines. This is present even before one considers the intermittency drawbacks. Grid scale wind ---- makes no sense ---- and for a country like Taiwan which has other pressing priorities like a looming invasion by China --- it would be better served by focusing on its nuclear power plants and territorial defense. They had better wake up to this reality.

Go nuclear