Offshore Wind to Save World Says "Up-For-Sale" Daily Telegraph

Offshore Wind to Save World From Climate Change
The UK Daily Telegraph recently published an article by the talented and brilliant Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, someone occasionally very right wing in some areas but always spot on when it comes to energy matters.
"Death Knell for Fossil Fuels? IEA Claims Offshore Wind can Power Humanity More Cheaply than Coal or Gas”
www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/10/25/death-knell-fossil-fuels-iea-claims-offshore-wind-can-power/
Achieving 100% by 2040 via Wind and Solar PV is certainly "mathematically" and practically possible. These are things that I am supposed to know and should be able to demonstrate, otherwise in Technical Due Diligence world you can look pretty stupid at meetings with some smart legal and finance people if you make things up or seem a little "flaky" as one of the technical people.
Whether it is all politically possible and cheap enough yet, well those are the main questions, with answers depending upon many things, including those who spend large sums pushing certain types of message and propaganda. However as Mr. Evans-Pritchard notes, the heavily oil company influenced IEA [www.iea.org] do indeed have a reputation for being arch-skeptics If they believe offshore wind has the potential to move to full electrification by whatever date, that's quite a big step.
The main issue for offshore wind is about the ongoing use of large steel support structures on seabeds in water depths of up to 60 m for the new generation 8- 12 MW machines which have been adopted now by Statoil, Vattenfall, EDF, ENGIE, EDPR, Repsol and other oil companies for their newest projects, the massive 3 bladed Siemens, Vestas, GE, Senvion, Goldwind (Chinese) amongst. BP will likely go with Siemens (German) or Vestas (Danish) when they start bidding, If Chevron or Exxon-Mobeil ever move into offshore US wind then they would likely go with GE of course.
This shows the latest GE Haliade-12 turbine just up and running in Rotterdam, which will be test-trialled for 3 years. GE will put many of these on the seabed on Dogger Bank (Norwegian-Scottish consortium) and off the coasts of Maryland (120 MW) and New Jersey (1100 MW). It's a beautiful piece of engineering with no gearbox, but from a structural point of view it's a beast both dynamically as it rotates and in sheer weight and forces. Too big and too heavy for floating units in my opinion:

As the industry shifts into deeper waters along the US West Coast and elsewhere (in California and Oregon there is little option but to use floaters, such is the rapid deepening of the water moving away from the coast. It is being assumed by the 15 “interested parties” for the first three zones that the 8-12 MW big beasts will sit upon large steel or concrete "barges" or spars. This will be too costly, for sure.
BLACKBIRD A Hybrid CAES Storage Anchored Mono TLP VAWT-WEC
www.academia.edu/35392649/BLACKBIRD_A_Hybrid_CAES_Storage_Anchored_Mono_TLP_VAWT-WEC
proceedings.windeurope.org/confex2017/posters/PO230.pdf
To achieve subsidy free onshore wind and solar PV numbers for deeper water, a step-gamechange to 21st century 3-D printed carbon fibre reinforced composite material (aircraft) floating units and high RPM lightweight will be necessary. This will likely include Vertical Axis supported high RPM spinning carbon fibre blades creating power via a superconductor generator at sea level, single line taut moored using oilfield technology to a subsea anchor base also acting as a hydrogen pumped storage unit for supply smoothing. The large seabed domed base fills up with electrically pumped in water when it's windy, generating hydrogen via turbine-electrolysis units and gets evacuated when calm, generating more hydrogen to gas replace the outflowing water and power at same time through the exiting water turning turbines in the base. Hydrogen goes to shore through a pipeline running parallel to a buried power export cable. Now not really rocket science.
The Torygraph up for Sale
However, the Torygraph is up for sale. No surprises there. Their demographics and average reader age has led to a slow death. Who will buy?
·      Russian Oligarch(s) [not the Klyuev group]
·      Masked Qatari Sovereign Wealth
·      Some UAE Princes as a plaything
·      Viktor Orban's Inner Circle
·      Michael "Victoria Cross" Ashcroft and his Bryant pals in Mississippi
·      Some expat non-dom patriot Billionaire fronting for big dark money
·      The Institute for Economic Affairs
The last is a possible really, they know most of the storylines anyway
www.bbc.com/news/uk-50192912

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chomsky Explanation

Image
A quite perfect explanation of the Trump attention-gathering clown show, from Noam Chomsky, probably the "hate-figure" most focused on, along with perhaps Naomi Klein (Shock Doctrine:  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine ), because they know and figured out what was going on with the Ayn Rand style "Libertarianism" (or Neoliberalism, it doesn't really matter which label is used frankly) that has grown and then exploded viciously and violently over the last 40 years. If I were forced to choose a year I would say 1981. It is now at or neat it's horrible apogee. Sasha-Borisova was supposed to be a similar if somewhat smaller telegenic side-show, but he sadly does not seem to have the immense showman's talent of Donald, nor his thick orange hide, nor his quite palpable level of sheer insanity, a lumpen mass not in possession of that helpful, brutal ignorance, those gargantuan levels of corruption, the sheer bloodied evil that runs through his darken...
Read more

Noor Abu Dhabi Solar in Desert and Dogger Bank Wind Power in North Sea

Image
Noor Abu Dhabi Solar in Desert and Dogger Bank Wind Power in North Sea Large scale clean energy is reaching a turning point in the Middle East with Solar PV plus desalination plants. This development is happening in tandem with cheaper offshore wind energy in Northern Europe: Noor Solar PV Plant Abu Dhabi Albawaba News: " Mapping the Middle East's $100 Billion Clean Energy Revolution", 3rd October 2019. www.albawaba.com/news/mapping-middle-easts-100-billion-clean-energy-revolution-1312707#_=_ Tech Spot: " UAE powers on Noor Abu Dhabi, the World's Largest Solar Project www.techspot.com/news/80740-uae-powers-noor-abu-dhabi-world-largest-solar.html UAE powers on Noor Abu Dhabi, the world's largest solar project - TechSpot Noor in Arabic means light, something which the new solar power project in Abu Dhabi will make plentiful use of to brighten up people's homes. As part of the country's initiative towards better ... www.techs...
Read more

Borisova and the Reformed Cuntocracy

Image
This is quite disgusting. The usual "You are all anti-business, anti-achievement" crap written by a lying nasty cheat who has become leader of a country (no not the crooked Leader of The Free World in the fat suit, his much less influential copycat City of London/Oligarch puppet-minion).  The first rule of journalism must be that it stands independent of power. So a front page like this is another sad day for the Daily Telegraph, but also sends an unhappy message about what journalism is actually for. The question as to whether foreigners (the owners) should be able to use newspapers in this way is an interesting one, but all a bit too late. Preaching to the converted I suppose. Half-maddened Borisova is not only demonstrably not a half-decent politician, he is not even a moderate journalist,  a fully paid of member of this small club. Squawking, nasty, pompous shits more or less to a cunt. A real toss-up who is the biggest, Cameron, Mogg, Borisova or Osborne. I should...
Read more