The first of five floating off-shore wind turbines has been installed off the NE coast of Scotland. Normally the pylons carrying the turbine assemblies are built on the sea bed to provide stability. This limits the locations that such wind farms can be located to shallow seas of up to 40 metres. The new design being trialled is intended to be anchored to the sea bed by cables in waters up to 1Km deep. This opens up large areas of the west coast of the USA and Japan, where bed steeply shelves, for exploitation.
As well as very heavy ballast, the Hywind farm turbines also rely on sophisticated trimming of the blades to counteract the effects of wind, seas and tide on the stability of the platform. This video from last year shows the prototype.
The farm is being built by Statoil, the Norwegian state oil and gas corporation. Funding is also being provided by the UK and Scottish governments. The current higher than necessary cost for the trial turbines is likely to reduce very quickly as production increases.
Like many new technologies, the biggest challenge will be cost. Behind the turbines at the deepwater port of Stord in Norway sits a huge lifting vessel usually used in the oil and gas industry. It is the second biggest of its kind, very expensive to hire – and, for now, essential in the process of lifting the turbines off the quayside and floating them.
The first-of-a-kind nature means supply chain complexity, too. “We have 15 main contractors. For the future we cannot have 15, we can have between 5 and 10,” said Leif Delp, project manager for Hywind.
Statoil said floating wind would be the same cost as conventional offshore windfarms by 2030, while IEA said the cost today was the same as fixed-bottom ones a decade ago.
Conventional sea-bed standing offshore turbines are starting to produce electricity in the UK cheaper than building new nuclear power stations. This is some four years ahead of the UK government’s projections.
The price of energy from bottom-standing offshore wind farms has plummeted 32% since 2012 - far faster that anyone predicted.
The price is now four years ahead of the government's expected target, and another big price drop is expected, taking offshore wind to a much lower price than new nuclear power.
The Hywind project is being run in collaboration with the Abu Dhabi firm Masdar. The £190m cost was subsidised by bill-payers under the UK government's Renewable Obligation Certificates.
The UK government has also announce funding of development of batteries suitable to store energy from renewable resources.
Batteries and renewable power sources are on the verge of bringing about an “epochal transformation” of the UK that could make energy clean, abundant and very cheap, according to a cabinet minister.
As the government unveiled plans for a more flexible energy system and £246m of funding for battery research, Greg Clark told the Guardian that a smarter grid would “radically” bring down bills.
“Energy, for the last 100 years, for good reasons, we’ve rationed the consumption of [because] it’s been very expensive and environmentally-damaging to consume fossil fuels. [But] given the possibilities we are on the cusp of at the moment, we might move to a world where energy is clean and abundant,” said the business secretary.
This forms one part of a long term strategy to reduce or even out the demand for electricity using technology. Internet connected washing machines could be set turn on when a signal is sent from the national grid when there is an abundance of renewable energy.
Batteries, and the ability for energy firms to automatically reduce electricity demand from willing businesses and households, are at the heart of a plan published by government and Ofgem.
Ofgem said using technology to flatten out peak demand and avoiding the cost for reinforcements to energy networks would save consumers £17bn-£40bn by 2050. The regulator said that the 29 changes to energy regulation announced on Monday, which will come in over the next 18 months, would also encourage new, tech-savvy entrants into the energy market.
Andrew Burgess, an associate partner at Ofgem, pointed to emerging smart appliances that could automatically turn down electricity use at peak times, and make it possible for companies to aggregate the solar power from householders’ rooftops and sell it to local power grids when needed.
These developments are making new nuclear an increasingly expensive option for ensuring power supplies in the future.