Just to clarify - if you do ever see an actual Griffin flying around off the coast of your country - make sure you film it and call your local TV network. You could make a lot of money!!! Sorry about that oversight in the script folks. Must have been a translation failing between Danish and English :-)
don't know about griffons , but I see lots of gannets , shearwaters and petrels when I am offshore in the western North Atlantic . puffins too but they're closer to land .
Dane here. No mention of griffins or vultures (gribbe in Danish) in the original paper, but maybe you were influenced by the fact that Ib Krag Petersen has collaborated with Cy Griffin 😀
I'm familiar with the term "conurbations" because of my having read Indian geography papers as an undergrad. However, the RUclips AI that creates the closed captions has translated it as "connections."
As always, for my money, I find _Just Have a Think_ to be one of the best sites for coverage of the renewable energy scene. One of the best informed/best information, definitely best presentation, with accuracy, clarity, no frills, no bells and whistles, no distractive, superfluous crap, no bullshit. Keep it up JHAT!
@@yeahright3733 And how exactly are you "defining "massive failure"? They may may not be as profitable as they wanted, but that hardly equates to a "massive failure."
@@KingClovis real world cost of wind turbines is higher than advanced clean coal burning plant by almost 50% and nearly 3 times that of natural gas. That is why this whole industry is a sham and wastes tax payer money and enriches the wind power industry with billions of dollars of tax payer money. Now that the tax incentives are over there is no way the private industry will continue to build wind turbines because they cannot compete with coal or natural gas. We should be putting those billions into updating the electrical grid which would have a much more profound effect on reducing carbon emmissions by exponentially increasing efficiencies in the current grid. We also should be spending those billions on new nuclear power plants . Instead, we have morons like Obama and other politicians, thinking they know better than scientist on what works. Obama wasted billions on solar that failed, but no one learned anything and they still throw away billions of dollars on everything that does not work. These green ideas are lies.
Well done, well said. My experience of 35 yrs is in the offshore industry and in particular offshore T&I (transport and installation). There are no technological "issues" (that I can see) for deep water floating wind turbines. The technology exists and it is the production capacity and funding that need to be developed. The service side of it, already exists thanks to the shallow water wind farms, it just needs to scale up (larger SOVs or Service Operation Vessels) so that the R&M teams can remain offshore for extended periods of time (like with the bigger offshore construction vessel in the O&G). What is interesting, I see a major opportunity for the T&I side to cut cost. Although I love the big crane vessels (I used to work the best in the world, Heerema), I think there is an opportunity to rely less on those big and expensive vessels and develop more cost effective methods (thanks to the economies of scale). The same goes for the installation of the subsea infrastructure (cables in particular), there is room for improvement there as well. In short, I think deep water offshore wind has a great future that we'll see develop further in the next decade(s).
instead of building vessels, build a offshore wind turbine as vessel then fill it botom with concrete to stand up turbine :D In my opinion, anchoring deep and moving folow the wind while power lines need to keep integrity is the very hard part
@@sebastienl2140 The ones in Scotland (Hywind) are SPAR type floaters, simple floating cylindrical basis with a concrete or other ballast material in the bottom (I forgot what they used) and then moored with a three or four point mooring system. The bigger ones that were shown were 3 leg floaters and other floater types are under development with smart mooring systems. None of them are vessel type (which would be overly expensive). The vessels I mentioned are being used for the installation of the turbine offshore and that is where I think we can go much cheaper, assembly inshore and then tow the complete unit to site. The mooring systems and cables still need to be installed (prior) and be hooked up (which would need a descent size crane on a offshore construction vessel, with ROVs etc. The thing is the massive big crane vessels (Sleipnir, Balder, Thialf, S7000 etc.) are expensive and only a few in the world. Smaller OCVs are plentiful and I'm sure we can design them for hook up duties and installation of moorings etc. can also be done from / with smaller vessels. Tugs are plentiful as well for the towing to site.
Recently started watching this channel and I'm a fan, but I think this video manages to miss perhaps the critical reason to be bullish about offshore wind: The power generated from a turbine approximates the SQUARE of a turbine blade's length (or radius of the swept area). Onshore blades can only be so big because they need to be transported via roads, but an offshore blade built at or near a port has no such constraint as it can be transported via barge to the open ocean. Thus as the offshore blades increase in size, their output grows in a non-linear way setting up the opportunity to leverage a fixed (or, as the industry scales, evening declining) cost of mooring these behemoths to the ocean bottom. Thus, it's not just the potential energy to be harnessed, which is indeed very, very large, it's the opportunity that costs may decline much faster than current expectations as turbine sizes continue to increase.
Yes the power available from a wind turbine is proportionate to the swept area of the blades, a circle, so Pi x the square of the radius. I did wonder whether vertical axis turbines would be simpler in deep offshore location, as the tricky thing will be maintaining the turbines, and having a massive generator at the top or a 200m pole is inherently unstable,whereas a VAWT has its generator at ground (sea) level.
Bigger diameters of rotors cause the blade tips to go through the sound barrier (a no- go I believe). So it will be either more blades or limited speeds.
@@Calligraphybooster it all depends on how fast it turns. Any size can break the sound barrier. A 55m blade for example turning one Herz (60 rpm) will go supersonic. The circumference is 2πr, with r being 55m that 345m/s at the tips, beating sound by 2m. However you could make a blade that's 500m long, and as long as it turns at less than roughly 0.1 Herz (about 6rpm) you are below supersonic. Or make it 5km long and then you just need to turn it reeeeeally slow at 0.01herz (0.6rpm) or less. Largest commercial turbines spin at about 10rpm with 100m blades come to about half way to supersonic at the tip. Larger blades will just mean slower turn rate. It's all geared in the generator anyway. It's more a factor of strength and flex of materials at larger scales that is the biggest limitation. However if we think about the square increase in power our current technology let's us go to about 250m in length per blade - that should hit about 100MW per turbine. And if we draw a curve into the future a 500m blade would produce 1GW and so on until you run out of wind. The sky is literally the limit.
@@MarkoCloud I am aware of the required lower rpm’s. But it would seem to me that reaching limits sich as the need to stay subsonic and maximum tensile loads would bring down efficiency. The max. efficiency is given by Betz. It can be reached at high rpm’s using even only one blade if you like or at lower rpm’s using more blades, like in the classical American farm pump design. I get a suspicion that a good deal of enginerding megalomania is involved in the desire to build these extremely big contraptions.
@@janmarsh What is it you disagree with? That there is a longer lifespan for onshore as opposed to offshore, or that this is a factor in them being installed? Or perhaps you don't think onshore is viable at all? I think what he said was that the shorter lifespan of offshore turbines is a mark against them when weighing up whether they are a good choice to build on a large scale.
@@danyoutube7491 Private investment are not interested at all, unless massive government grants outweigh the cost. No profit in any wind turbines anywhere. I'm all for green generation where possible. With wind turbines .... Not possible.
@@rolliebca Rolland, Sweeping based on mechanical fact. I've ran and maintained large ships propulsion generators most of my working life. Am I to understand once a unit is placed in a wind situation, longevity extends to 20 to 25 years ? Doesn't happen .... I would have liked to have worked with those. Marine Engineers want to know how this is managed.
@@bibliotek42 Yes. I supose most of us have seen Caddyshack. But I laugh not at the toilet humour aspect; rather I laugh at the irony of the design engineer naming his structure in such a poetically accurate and deprecating way, it being so incredibly stupid to approach deepwater wind energy with top-heavy, unweildy, very expensive _conventional wind turbines._
Create a 'field' of floating wind turbines surrounded by a 'fence' or wall of wave-powered generators which absorb/ reduce the wave energy incident upon the wind turbines.
It is hard to believe that a relatively short number of years ago smoking was permitted in airplanes and restaurants. Today, that would be unthinkable. Let us all hope that developments in renewable energy lead to a similar disruption of what is ‘normal’ in terms of the acceptability of fossil fuel driven energy production.
Tom, you really ought to give up those blue pills. They're very harmful to your brain. Compared to the effects of volcanism and cosmic impactors on climate, fossil fuels are a joke. That was a counter culture crusade started by some very silly, ignorant people back in the 60s and it's long past time we let go of it. I've heard "the sky is falling" from the climate freaks since I was a kid, but it was always 100% baloney, same as now. We 're on fossils until thorium or fusion get going, so let's get on with it
As a light commissioner for a small Municipal electric company in MA, we see offshore wind as one of the few sources of power that can meet our future requirements for non-emitting sources of power and have written to the BOEM to approve permitting so we have this as a power purchase option. We are well aware of the 30+ lawsuits funded by William Koch of Osterville, MA (Of Koch oil fame), that eventually drove Jim Gordon of smaller Cape Wind project out of business. We hope the developers of this Vineyard wind project will persevere against such opposition, as this is the obvious choice for powering the North East of the US and if we could synchronize this with Quebec hydro for some energy storage we have a very feasible way to get to net zero.
Floating wind turbines combined with utilizing wave energy would be really cool. Plus one could use compressed air underwater for energy storage. Combining multiple sources of renewable energy in the same place just seems like a natural progression
I'm an inventor; have a patent in this area and I've worked on a vertical axis wind turbine in S. Texas . I'm a fan of gyroscopes and I believe a solid gyroscope disc at the base of a deep sea turbine would stabilize it and also provide some flywheel energy steadying effect. The gyroscope being solid will minimize the drag of the water on the disc and the disc will need to be a substantial fraction of the diameter of the blades. It may be that two or more discs are required. They can be made of concrete filled fiberglass and spun via friction drive planetary wheels. They'll need some kind of electrical charge or something to keep the barnacles off.. I think. anti-torque disc will also be required.
Your diction, phrasing and grammar are invariably perfect - almost. Which is probably why I noticed "economy of scales" where I expected "economies of scale." Sorry to nitpick. Love your videos.
Oh no he said it correctly; he means that weighing scale prices are falling, which is useful because really big scales are needed for checking how much the turbines weigh.
I work as a marine engineer, and a couple of colleagues of mine actually worked on Hywind Scotland! Due to the massive amounts of capital bound up in each construction, the offshore marine industry tends to be quite conservative and many current floating wind turbine concepts reflect this. However, there are many fascinating and radical ideas on how to bring LCOE down that are being explored by various companies. To mention a few: Hexicon, Wind Catching Systems, X1 wind and SeaTwirl. More incremental improvements have already been made since Hywind Scotland, and at the new site Hywind Tampen, Equinor (the developer) expects a 40% cost decrease compared to the former. Lots of companies as well as the EU are investing heavily in floating offshore wind technology, and it's likely there will be a massive amount of floating wind farms built in the next decade. Can't wait to see how it all turns out!
@@HunterCadre That number is way off... Today, wind power accounts for about 2% of the world's energy needs... But how many wind turbines does it take to make that 2%? Over 400,000 Do the math. Let's say that you want to power half of the world at today's energy levels, how many would you need, knowing the fact I just gave you? Tens of millions, just to power half of the world's energy requirements. Now Keep in mind that the world's energy requirements are set to double or even triple in the next 100 years due to everyone moving to EV's for transportation. You're looking at double or triple tens of millions needed, just to power half the world. And how long do these wind turbines last before mechanical stresses and general wear and tear force us to tear them down and replace them? 20 years, 25 tops if you maintain them assiduously. So you want us to build tens of millions of these wind turbines, and every 20-30 years we have to tear them all down and rebuild them back? Never gonna work, friend.
@@Les_S537 Well I assume that 400 000 number of yours includes the itty-bitty ones too, the turbine size has increased over the years and keeps increasing. As far as offshore is concerned at least, new turbines are basically 7MW++. But, while comprehensive energy strategy is not my area of expertise, generating 100% or even 50% of the world's energy through wind turbines is a little silly to me. Imo transitioning away from burning fossil fuels will require every alternative at our disposal, and yes, nuclear too.
@@HunterCadre Have you looked the the Generation IV nuclear reactor models at all yet? Do me a favor, go look up the Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor (MCSFR) by Elysium Industries. Ed Pheil, the designer of this reactor, worked with the US Navy for 32 years designing and building nuclear reactors for our naval ships and submarines. His new design, the MCSFR, has two main purposes... Purpose 1 is to provide mankind with abundant energy Purpose 2 is to take every bit of the nuclear waste we have generated over the last 70 years, and recycle every bit of it. I'm paraphrasing, of course, but his reactor can take all the long lived nuclear waste that takes tens to hundreds of thousands of years to become safe, and transmute it into lots of lighter elements that we can use in our modern society. Elements like neodymium. Neodymium is used in high end magnets. EVs use neodymium magnets in EV motors. Some of the other elements this reactor can make are: molybdenum ruthenium rhodium strontium zirconium palladium etc Because this reactor is molten salt cooled instead of water cooled like today's reactors are, you can never have a meltdown like you can in today's reactors. As we all know by now, if one of today's nuclear reactors loses the ability to be cooled by circulating water, the water will boil off, the nuclear material will meltdown and explode, and then you've got lots of radioactive waste spread all over the surrounding countryside. This can't happen in a molten salt cooled reactor. The MCSFR is 1/20th the size of one of today's nuclear reactors, why? Because today's nuclear reactors are massive structures that require complicated and costly triple redundant safety systems to ensure they never have a meltdown. Because molten salt reactors don't have to worry about a meltdown, you don't have to install all those safety systems. Thus these newer Generation IV molten salt reactors will be much *MUCH* cheaper to build and operate.
The way you just so casually put the turbine onto the water and let it flop was perfect. the way you kept the straight face is what brought me to laughter. Bravo chap.
Thank you again for another great video. It is desperately important that the sort of content you produce is put out there and made accessible to a wide audience! Which you do such a brilliant job of doing. :)
@@JustHaveaThink Thank you, too, for these intesting selections of subjects in your channel! All subjects you have chosen are really game-changing. There are some moments where for a non-native speaker it is difficult to follow your speech (mumbling) and others are very clear. Greetings from Germany.
One thing that wasn't really talked about here is: How to power is transmitted from the offshore turbine to wherever it is actually being used. A somewhat important detail in light of the fact that the further power is transmitted the more of it gets lost along the way.
True... I saw one claim that having hydrogen production attached to these wind farms and then a hydrogen pipeline to shore rather than a transmission cable would be more efficient, or at least have smaller transport losses. I am skeptical of that claim, as you'd have losses electrolysing the hydrogen, especially considering you'd first have to desalinate ocean water. So, I dunno. Would love to read an objective comparison of the two methods.
There are an awful lot of site that are no further offshore then existing North Sea farms - it's just that the water is deeper than 30m (Scotland, California, Japan, Spain, and the majority of coastal countries in fact). So the power situation is no different from what has already been proven in the North Sea.
These deep water developments are 20-40km from shore in most cases. The electrical losses aren't that significant, and are probably on par with a solar development in a desert, for example.
This channel is a credit to you. Excellent, trustworthy coverage on the exciting renewable energy developments which is essential to our collective future.
@@JustHaveaThink I follow another much smaller channel, DrKStrong by a retired climatologist which I recommend to you. He lays out AGW in graphic detail accessible to the layman and sets the liars straight. I don't consider myself a "green activist" but as a father, I find the stark reality of AGW frankly depressing. The peer review literature speaks for itself; with caveats and without hyperbole, the conclusions are all the more frightening. Your channel is a wonderful antidote to that, you give a vision of a better future grounded in real science and engineering. I'm truly grateful to you for that on a personal level.
"called floaters..which is unfortunate" haha always a funny quip. Great video Dave. These are hopeful projects. Glad that talented people are doing this work.
Very underrated channel in science community. Sir great work on the wind turbines but can you cover about the tidal energy and it's comparison with wind energy
well it will all amount to nothing unless your lot keep the one eyed trouser snake quiet and stop adding to the utterly grotesque population increase there, in less than a single human lifetime - more than 1.1 BILLION extra people! Bloody ludicrous.
@@terencefield3204 looks like we've managed to knacker our knackers, probably PFAS chemicals or some such madness, either way populations are set to drop.
Hi Dave. This is an excellent video for explaining the challenges of expanding wind power further offshore. We love to share info with you about a new technology we're working on that will make it more affordable and easier to anchor turbines offshore - especially in bedrock - thus expanding the available seafloor real estate for offshore power farms.
the really exciting thing about offshore wind is that the costs have go down so much in the past 10 years that many upcoming offshore wind projects have PPAs in the 50-70 Euros/MWh mark. That is a genuinely tremendous achievement for the wind turbine industry.
As usual, excellent work! What came to mind for me was using an oil tanker size ship filled with batteries, being charged by multiple smaller wind turbines mounted on top. When fully charged to ship would simply sail to port and plug into the grid.
The attempt to float the turbine at the beginning of the video is not a failure which ends the project. It gives the inspiration to build deep sea-currents turbines instead. :)
@@reahs4815 high risk high reward. barely anyone is willing to invest with a high chance of loosing it all (most companies in startup markets fail) but if you invested in the right one .. it easily ten maybe hundredfolds your invest .. IF you chose the right one
Shell ( oil) is the major for the first big offshore wind farm , mayflower wind . whether or not the electricity part works they will get Huge sums of gov subsidy money . that's where the money is . warren buffet , no fool , is invested in wind power but states flatly it is just to take advantage of large sums of gov money .
Dave, great report once more ! There is so much potential, northern Canada has also of great options on, unfortunately the isolation of those giants add a number of logistical headaches. I had a chat with a lady who works for a Wind farm company here in the USA, I inquired about the impact of adding back tape to make the blades more visible for bird, thermal impact of the tapes color and weight effect on the blades. She confirmed they were testing these ideas in the field on beta sites and to collect more evidence (pros and cons).
I found your videos earlier this year and have watched many many of them. Some was just to get a second/third/fourth opinion/facts on our climate and how we are effecting it. I thank you for all your dedication and work in spreading this information around. I've tried to do my part over here across the pond, but it's a uphill battle that I see little chance of winning. You mentioned in different video something along the lines of what we can do individually; and your biggest push was to contact the government representatives of the people and such then ask them their plans and such. I myself also believe that the only way to get a solution implemented and underway is in a sense the same thing. For my simple mind I just call it protesting. It means nothing alone though with enough it could make a difference. I've been racking my brain trying to figure out just how something like this... a large enough protest to get the people with power/money to do something. Even in this day n age it just breaks my heart to see the outline of our future and hold so little power to change it for the better. Please let me know what (if anything) we could do as an average joe with no real funds or power to ensure the future of our humanity with our home? Cause if it's just protest.. then we need quite a bit more joes haha. Thank you again! I love watching your videos even if they often contain depressing facts that everyone should know about our home. I spread the word as much as I can!
Another superb video by Dave. I believe that future of wind energy, onshore, offshore or deep sea, lies in bladeless wind turbines which are far more environmentally responsible, far lower weight and dimensions and will provide enormous amounts of electricity to power all the electric cars and electric trucks.
Vertical axis turbines are much less efficient and they have other problems, they have high cyclical mechanical stress, cyclical energy production, which are bad for longevity and electricity quality. There is also the problem of how do you reduce the power when the wind is too strong. If this design is less efficient, it means it needs more materials to achieve same power output, so it increases costs. That's why no one has built a vertical axis turbine more than 1MW.
I know there's been a couple of attempts, though other than pointing to the general VAWT disadvantages I couldn't say for sure why they have failed so far. There's actually a startup called SeaTwirl working right now trying to make floating VAWTs a reality.
@@michaeldalton5220 I looked at Seatwirl website, its a complete joke. They can't compare at all with existing wind turbine manufacturers. Their working prototype is 30kW, which is 400 times smaller than the biggest working prototype of offshore wind turbine Haliade X 12MW(soon to be 14). And 30kW is 200 time smaller than the 6MW hy wind scotland floating offshore wind turbine. Sea twirl is currently developping a 1 MW turbine, which (if it works) will be 6 to 12 times smaller than competitors. But they look to have an interesting concept.
Not only off shore wind power but also; artificial reefs with Biorock carbon sequestration coral reefs (key, together with sea grass) to complete the carbon gettering cycle, water purification and fish sanctuaries. These will remove carbon from the ocean and purify sea water provide sanctuaries for marine life. A complete concept of deep sea terraforming yields; food, materials, energy, filtration and permanent carbon sequestration and ocean restoration. Closer to shore a wind farms with Biorock Seagrass can reduce coastal erosion.
Did the estimates provided include transmission losses? I have heard that a great deal of energy is lost in long distance electrical transmission lines. I do not know if this is accurate or what variables affect the losses. But now that the grid competes with on premise generation (is that called co-generation, via solar or gas fuel cell?), the extra transmission loses due to the distance to some deep water installations could be significant?
For submarine cables the current is converted to HVDC from AC (AC has high capacitive loss when conductors are in water) then the HVDC is converted back to AC on land .These are the main reason for losses. The technology is in use all over the world. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Inter-Island en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects#Australia_and_Oceania
The transmission loss from the planed link between Singapore and Australia was approximately 10%, very acceptable for getting those great opportunities.
Once the renewably powered electricity is onshore we can harness it in grid batteries, residential batteries, electric heated floors inside highly insulated homes and in electric vehicles.
floating wind often won't be that much further offshore than some of the existing deployments. But its opens up more sea area as you're not depth limited. Even at double the present distances the losses are small in the grand scheme of things.
Here in the UK we should keep building offshore wind turbines. This technology looks amazing and hopefully we will be able to transition to a carbon zero economy by 2050.
Where there's a way, there's a will. Let's hope these prototypes work well. Being out of sight and out of mind is a positive attribute for costal communities of both humans and wildlife. Optimistic.
Well, yes, other than the "wildlife" of the oceans... As long as the underside is built to keep the fishes of the sea, safe. There has to be a way to get that energy to the land. Is it cables being used, or what?? Entanglement is a huge issue. All in all, way better than the petro platforms mucking up the oceans.
Great video as always. What about connecting the floating turbines to grids? Is it still realistic to use cables or does it make more sense to put an electrolysed there and produce green hydrogen? Particularly if salt water electrolysis becomes a reality. Thanks
Use less energy is another good option. Otherwise can't just do anything else then marvel at the great ingenuity people have at their capacity, and if we would just be willing to pay what it cost to keep this planet, with us on it, for another few hundred years we wouldn't have to scrimp and save to compete with oils. I gladly pay more for that certainty. Thank you for the great inspiring channel!
@@orkin2525 Poverty from what? Overconsumption? I'm not a economist so I won't try to tread these waters too much, but spending your money on something that gives you back a better profit in the long run seems sensible anyhow.
Energy reduction does not equate to energy poverty. Energy efficient buildings, appliances, manufacturing, etc. are an essential component of our ability to become fossil fuel / carbon emissions free. Buildings can readily run on 50% of the energy they did just a decade ago. And unfortunately it seems we need government mandates to make this happen because it’s 5-10% more expense to build this way.,
@@julianugentarchitect if we reduce usage to the point where wind and solar can provide enough power it will be energy poverty for those without hydro and geothermal. If you want people to stop burning stuff to get stuff done there has to be a huge amount of cheap, clean energy as an alternative. The other option is reverting everything back to people power and substance farming.
Could utilize deep ocean wind power to generate fresh water in situ for certain locales like California and countries adjacent to the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas. Power would be consumed in reverse osmosis or vacuum evaporators to produce pure water or further electrolysized for H2. Accordingly, laying semi-permanent undersea cable for power transmission would not be required.
Still concerned about the impact of plastic waste from the wear of the blades(namely bisphenol A), and what the noise may do to the ecosystem. Would be nice with some more independent studies on this matter first. Much can probably be solved in how the blades are produced
the predecessor to offshore wind turbines Out by Ebeltoft Ferry Port they are close by, they stand on a stone pier. Originally, 18 turbines were erected in 1985, which at the time was Northern Europe's largest wind farm, and at the beginning of the year 2000 they were replaced with just 4 large ones. The windmills are fine and just fit into the landscape. Easy to park and enjoy nature and windmills.
Dude, that thumbnail title has created some mental imagery that is going to stick around for a while . “Deep Ocean Floaters” brings to mind GodIlla/Kong polluting the sea after a very fatty meal the night before…
Marine Power Systems (Swansea) has designed and tested a prototype floating platform that can carry not only a wind turbine, but if desired, wave-energy collectors as well.
The problem with all this is, as always, speed of installation and energy density. You hallowed the massive installation of 50MW!, whereas Hinkley C will generate 3.2GW, 64x the power and entirely constant with significant inertial mass to help stabilise grid frequency. We absolutely need to pursue wind power, but it simply won't work without nuclear. The past month saw wind generation produce an average of 3GW, despite an installed capacity of 25GW. We don't have the storage capacity for a day's power requirements, let alone a month's (arguably more than total global power storage).
I worked in the nuclear industry for 31 years and I have to say nuclear is great but it takes the investment of a country to get a power plant online. Then there is the long decommissioning to think of.
@@fastfreddy19641 I don't disagree, various studies have shown that if Hinkley C had been government backed it would have cost half as much and the decommissioning has been built into modern EPR reactors. EDF exports €22bn of electricity every year, with much of that from reactors built in the 70s, the reason they don't have money for the decommissioning is because they've bought half the grids of Europe.
@@LudvigIndestrucable yes. Hartlepool, an AGR paid its mortgage off years ago. Shame the CEGB still didn't own it as we could had used the profit to finance Hc and wind. 👍
@@fastfreddy19641 Yes, the AGR fleet has proved really reliable, but didn't meet their initial marketing hype (online refueling and removable fuel rods), the initial hope was to sell the design around the world which would have significantly offset the design costs. This is actually a wider issue that France partially solved, one of the easiest ways to make things more affordable is scale. The French pushed through a massive investment in a nuclear fleet, though their PWRs were arguably inferior to the British AGR design.
@@LudvigIndestrucable your right. Hartlepool was deigned for reduced power on load refuelling but we had to come off and have refuelling outages which changed how we operated. We also had to invest in the AFSF. That said they are very good reactors with very low radiation exposure to the workforce. 👍
Any companies currently building a wind turbine and a water turbine combined in the same structure? Excellent presentation and thought provoking as always.
Another application for floating windmills exists in geoengineering ideas for freezing the arctic. The power would be used to pump water to the surface to thicken the arctic ice. I think I saw that they could be used for marine cloud brightening as well, but not sure on that.
How thick do you want the Arctic ice to be? Have you been in the Arctic and measured the thickness of the ice? In January it is -60 degrees. Ice melts middle of July and middle of August freezes up to 7 feet thick.
@@robertkat, well I remember a time when the US nuclear subs would go up to the north pole at minimum and smash through 3 meters of ice to surface. So that is how much ice I want...not sure we are prepared to act accordingly however. So another realistic answer would be, any ice over the north pole would be grand. Call it an aspirational goal because to do that, we need all the arctic partners to agree. Russia, for now anyway is a rather large impediment to any geoengineering.
While floating wind is a good start, they will in the end lose out to combined platforms. The current focus is on reducing the cost of the floating hull as a way to reduce the cost of electricity. There are two problems with that approach; first it is a self limiting solution (there is only so small you can get and hold up a 15MW turbine), second even if I reduced the hull cost to zero I would only reduce the electricity price about 12%. Hull cost is only one of more than 20 major cost items most of which dont change with the number of energy systems. Combined platforms, which use combinations of wind and waves, or really crazy ones like our that combine as many systems as we can, share theses costs out. The result is a 25%+ reduction in electricity cost, a reduction in the total number of platforms, a higher capacity factor (meaning less need for storage), and spare payload that can be used for other value added activities. The math is too simple, eventually the hybrids will win out wind only installations.
The four point under the surface with the stage mooring design will be a lot more stable that the anchored buoy. Even with a lot of extra weight to dampen the movement it will flex a lot more.
@@assepa "Tension leg platform " is just all over in the oil industri and this is page describe the system: www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/tension-leg-platforms
The Scottish design comes from the Norwegian oil company Equinor (previously Statoil). I'm skeptical of the amount of material that goes into that design which comes with a substantial carbon footprint compared to other designs. Also, they can pretty much only be built at yards in the Norwegian fjords. There are many other designs in the "semi-submersible" family that are more promising at scale.
Deep-ocean offshore wind is a great source of power. OTEC and ocean current power are two sources of power that should receive more backing. The baseload power OTEC and ocean current power can both provide is absolutely enormous, and can create additional revenue streams such as trace element extraction.
I prefer the idea of capturing more “low hanging fruit” of onshore wind, and quell the objections to views being spoilt on the grounds that we cant afford to be that fussy given the existential crisis we face. Local distributed power generation is likely to be the eventual future as it is the least wasteful and community driven projects are essential to sustainability of our society structure. Great to build some mega offshore to make Nuclear pointless and quell the base load sticklers, but like any one option, all avenues need to be followed, and I fear relying on really big scale plant of any kind is counter-productive in some ways.
The arguement of a natural autocrat; socialists love to push people about, and this is your opportunity, eh?!?! Nuclear? Perish the thought - the Greens have spoken! ( Idiots).Nuclear is not 'pointless' despite your obvious prejudice.
@@terencefield3204 Sounds like you have Murdoch Syndrome. The simple fact is nuclear is the most expensive electricity generation ever devised. How's Hinkley Point C going for you? Or any of the other many years delayed and many billions over budget nuke plants under construction. Then there is the radioactive waste to deal with for thousands of years. Nuclear is dead end. All different types of renewable energy like solar, wind and geothermal will be the only way forward in a capitalist society where the least costly product always wins. You are a capitalist, aren't you?
@@bluebox2000 😳... too many like you. I will tell you a secret: not because many people says the same... they should be right. Do you understand what cero carbon emitions means?
Scotland’s wind farm operators have been handed more than £230 million to shut down their turbines. The record windfall for 2020, funded by energy bill-payers, is up from £130 million in 2019 - an increase of nearly 81 per cent in a year. Experts estimate the amount of discarded energy is equivalent to about 14 per cent of total annual electricity consumption north of the Border.
State of Maine just signed a law that prohibits offshore wind turbines in their waters. I guess not everyone in the world wants renewable energy. Fishing industry won this time. This is why you need to go further offshore with these turbines.
"....which the development team refer to as floaters; which is unfortunate." 🤣 Your dead-pan delivery is divine. I'd wager that most of the audience (i.e.: non-Brits) had no idea that was a wonderfully juvenile joke! 👌
10:19: I know this is a green energy channel, but the engineer in me is curious on how oil platforms drill for oil in rough seas like shown here? I'm always under the impression that the platforms are steady, but that obviously only pertains to shallow water platforms where they can easily anchor to the sea floor.
Watch the excellent video coverage of the gulf oil spill disaster a decade ago. The structure of these rigs, on the surface and on the sea bottom, as well as the efforts that have to be taken when a storm is imminent to shut things down and restart after things calm down, are excellent to behold.
I'm not sure but I would very very surprised if they continue working in extreme rough conditions. They most likely sit it out and wait for calmer waters.
Can I respectively suggest that you find some alternative to "enough to power XXX homes". Most of us don't know how much "a home" uses or how many there are in the country. "... enough to supply 0.15% of the national grid" gives a much better indication of its significance and how many we'd need to make a large contribution to the nation's requirements. Keep up the good work!
Grant - I didn't catch the output mentioned in the video, but I think we need more than one of these. According to the EA government website New Zealand consumed about 38,800 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity in 2017. One Haliade-X 14 MW turbine can generate up to 74 GWh of gross annual energy. I haven't finished my coffee yet so I'll leave the calculation...
Makani is an interesting option, it’s a tether glider and doesn’t need the same amount of support due to not having the mass / center of gravity issues by a conventional tower.
once again a great video. Well done. I suppose the obvious thing to say is what a great opportunity to reopen the shipyards in the UK and provide work building these mammoth structures, or at least part thereof. Wheebles wobble but they don't fall down, if you can remember these toys from long ago.
Some assessment of the level of global warming resulting from wind turbines (once mentioned in an Economist magazine science article) would be interesting.
The question is whether these LCOE & equivalent (I hereby name LCO2OE) "greenhouse gases (GHGs)" assessments are comprehensive & reliably accurate. Would need a panel of impartial (do those exist ?) paid experts or a dedicated hobbyist who didn't mind his/her life being consumed/wasted to get that well settled. It certainly won't be me, nor will it be you I infer.
@@grindupBaker Only a basic understanding of physics is required to know that the energy produced by wind farms turns into heat. The Chinese built a windfarm but forgot that each turbine slows the wind speed . The result was turbines that did not move when the wind came from a given direction. This slowing is turned into heat. It would be a good idea to understand the process, if only to improve the design of wind farms.
Renewables are only expensive because it is compared to the low cost of fossile energy. When we agree to tax consumption of fossile fuels to finance society's cost of its impact, the whole picture will change. Also, agree to the comments on ecconomy of scale. New tech is allways comparatively expensive until infrastructure and production is developed.
![Twenty One Pilots - The Line (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Audio]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XCz7WUotXs8/mqdefault.jpg)
Just to clarify - if you do ever see an actual Griffin flying around off the coast of your country - make sure you film it and call your local TV network. You could make a lot of money!!! Sorry about that oversight in the script folks. Must have been a translation failing between Danish and English :-)
Griffon vulture perhaps?
don't know about griffons , but I see lots of gannets , shearwaters and petrels when I am offshore in the western North Atlantic . puffins too but they're closer to land .
Not a Saab Gripen, surely?
Dane here. No mention of griffins or vultures (gribbe in Danish) in the original paper, but maybe you were influenced by the fact that Ib Krag Petersen has collaborated with Cy Griffin 😀
I'm familiar with the term "conurbations" because of my having read Indian geography papers as an undergrad. However, the RUclips AI that creates the closed captions has translated it as "connections."
As always, for my money, I find _Just Have a Think_ to be one of the best sites for coverage of the renewable energy scene. One of the best informed/best information, definitely best presentation, with accuracy, clarity, no frills, no bells and whistles, no distractive, superfluous crap, no bullshit. Keep it up JHAT!
Funny how greens rarely mention the birds killed by wind turbines especially large predatory birds.
@@RemusKingOfRome and how wind turbines have been a massive failure in terms of cost and effectiveness.
@@RemusKingOfRome Actually, I hear it mentioned quit a bit. Maybe we have different definitions of the word "rarely"?
@@yeahright3733 And how exactly are you "defining "massive failure"? They may may not be as profitable as they wanted, but that hardly equates to a "massive failure."
@@KingClovis real world cost of wind turbines is higher than advanced clean coal burning plant by almost 50% and nearly 3 times that of natural gas.
That is why this whole industry is a sham and wastes tax payer money and enriches the wind power industry with billions of dollars of tax payer money.
Now that the tax incentives are over there is no way the private industry will continue to build wind turbines because they cannot compete with coal or natural gas.
We should be putting those billions into updating the electrical grid which would have a much more profound effect on reducing carbon emmissions by exponentially increasing efficiencies in the current grid.
We also should be spending those billions on new nuclear power plants .
Instead, we have morons like Obama and other politicians, thinking they know better than scientist on what works. Obama wasted billions on solar that failed, but no one learned anything and they still throw away billions of dollars on everything that does not work.
These green ideas are lies.
I understand that bird collisions with wind turbines can be minimized by colouring one of the three blades black.
Well done, well said. My experience of 35 yrs is in the offshore industry and in particular offshore T&I (transport and installation). There are no technological "issues" (that I can see) for deep water floating wind turbines. The technology exists and it is the production capacity and funding that need to be developed. The service side of it, already exists thanks to the shallow water wind farms, it just needs to scale up (larger SOVs or Service Operation Vessels) so that the R&M teams can remain offshore for extended periods of time (like with the bigger offshore construction vessel in the O&G). What is interesting, I see a major opportunity for the T&I side to cut cost. Although I love the big crane vessels (I used to work the best in the world, Heerema), I think there is an opportunity to rely less on those big and expensive vessels and develop more cost effective methods (thanks to the economies of scale). The same goes for the installation of the subsea infrastructure (cables in particular), there is room for improvement there as well. In short, I think deep water offshore wind has a great future that we'll see develop further in the next decade(s).
instead of building vessels, build a offshore wind turbine as vessel then fill it botom with concrete to stand up turbine :D
In my opinion, anchoring deep and moving folow the wind while power lines need to keep integrity is the very hard part
@@sebastienl2140 The ones in Scotland (Hywind) are SPAR type floaters, simple floating cylindrical basis with a concrete or other ballast material in the bottom (I forgot what they used) and then moored with a three or four point mooring system. The bigger ones that were shown were 3 leg floaters and other floater types are under development with smart mooring systems. None of them are vessel type (which would be overly expensive). The vessels I mentioned are being used for the installation of the turbine offshore and that is where I think we can go much cheaper, assembly inshore and then tow the complete unit to site. The mooring systems and cables still need to be installed (prior) and be hooked up (which would need a descent size crane on a offshore construction vessel, with ROVs etc. The thing is the massive big crane vessels (Sleipnir, Balder, Thialf, S7000 etc.) are expensive and only a few in the world. Smaller OCVs are plentiful and I'm sure we can design them for hook up duties and installation of moorings etc. can also be done from / with smaller vessels. Tugs are plentiful as well for the towing to site.
Eugene, as someone working on the dynamic subsea cable supply side I'd be interested to hear what you have in mind for optimizing cable T&I.
@@Danandlene are you on LinkedIn?
@@genieb Yes, you'll find me working in Oslo
Recently started watching this channel and I'm a fan, but I think this video manages to miss perhaps the critical reason to be bullish about offshore wind: The power generated from a turbine approximates the SQUARE of a turbine blade's length (or radius of the swept area). Onshore blades can only be so big because they need to be transported via roads, but an offshore blade built at or near a port has no such constraint as it can be transported via barge to the open ocean. Thus as the offshore blades increase in size, their output grows in a non-linear way setting up the opportunity to leverage a fixed (or, as the industry scales, evening declining) cost of mooring these behemoths to the ocean bottom. Thus, it's not just the potential energy to be harnessed, which is indeed very, very large, it's the opportunity that costs may decline much faster than current expectations as turbine sizes continue to increase.
Yes the power available from a wind turbine is proportionate to the swept area of the blades, a circle, so Pi x the square of the radius. I did wonder whether vertical axis turbines would be simpler in deep offshore location, as the tricky thing will be maintaining the turbines, and having a massive generator at the top or a 200m pole is inherently unstable,whereas a VAWT has its generator at ground (sea) level.
Bigger diameters of rotors cause the blade tips to go through the sound barrier (a no- go I believe). So it will be either more blades or limited speeds.
@@Calligraphybooster it all depends on how fast it turns. Any size can break the sound barrier. A 55m blade for example turning one Herz (60 rpm) will go supersonic. The circumference is 2πr, with r being 55m that 345m/s at the tips, beating sound by 2m. However you could make a blade that's 500m long, and as long as it turns at less than roughly 0.1 Herz (about 6rpm) you are below supersonic. Or make it 5km long and then you just need to turn it reeeeeally slow at 0.01herz (0.6rpm) or less. Largest commercial turbines spin at about 10rpm with 100m blades come to about half way to supersonic at the tip. Larger blades will just mean slower turn rate. It's all geared in the generator anyway. It's more a factor of strength and flex of materials at larger scales that is the biggest limitation. However if we think about the square increase in power our current technology let's us go to about 250m in length per blade - that should hit about 100MW per turbine. And if we draw a curve into the future a 500m blade would produce 1GW and so on until you run out of wind. The sky is literally the limit.
@@MarkoCloud I am aware of the required lower rpm’s. But it would seem to me that reaching limits sich as the need to stay subsonic and maximum tensile loads would bring down efficiency. The max. efficiency is given by Betz. It can be reached at high rpm’s using even only one blade if you like or at lower rpm’s using more blades, like in the classical American farm pump design. I get a suspicion that a good deal of enginerding megalomania is involved in the desire to build these extremely big contraptions.
I suppose that's true as long as the blade manufacturer is right on the ocean.
I literally never comment on videos, I'm such a science geek, and I genuinely look forward to every single video you put out! This s*** is important!
Turbine life does not even make land installations viable.
@@janmarsh What is it you disagree with? That there is a longer lifespan for onshore as opposed to offshore, or that this is a factor in them being installed? Or perhaps you don't think onshore is viable at all? I think what he said was that the shorter lifespan of offshore turbines is a mark against them when weighing up whether they are a good choice to build on a large scale.
@@danyoutube7491 Private investment are not interested at all, unless massive government grants outweigh the cost. No profit in any wind turbines anywhere. I'm all for green generation where possible. With wind turbines .... Not possible.
@@janmarsh Very broad sweeping statements. Can you provide a few links to articles or videos that have influenced your opinion on this subject?
@@rolliebca Rolland, Sweeping based on mechanical fact. I've ran and maintained large ships propulsion generators most of my working life. Am I to understand once a unit is placed in a wind situation, longevity extends to 20 to 25 years ? Doesn't happen .... I would have liked to have worked with those. Marine Engineers want to know how this is managed.
Good on Daniel Turdiman to come up with his amazing floaters
Kudos to a man who can describe industrial use for floaters with a straight face. 😆
"Floater in the river" means a dead body.
@@YodaWhat Indeed. In the UK a "floater" has quite different associations...
@@bibliotek42 Yes. I supose most of us have seen Caddyshack. But I laugh not at the toilet humour aspect; rather I laugh at the irony of the design engineer naming his structure in such a poetically accurate and deprecating way, it being so incredibly stupid to approach deepwater wind energy with top-heavy, unweildy, very expensive _conventional wind turbines._
I laugh at the juvenility of commenters that think this has anything to do with the video!
@@gamingtonight1526 why does the corporate world think bigger is better????
Create a 'field' of floating wind turbines surrounded by a 'fence' or wall of wave-powered generators which absorb/ reduce the wave energy incident upon the wind turbines.
A wall or fence for the humongous size of offshore wind farms really seems useless. Besides, we know that waves travel through anything that's buoyant
It is hard to believe that a relatively short number of years ago smoking was permitted in airplanes and restaurants. Today, that would be unthinkable. Let us all hope that developments in renewable energy lead to a similar disruption of what is ‘normal’ in terms of the acceptability of fossil fuel driven energy production.
There is no energy crisis: imgur.com/gallery/NvBrj5J
and overwhelming consensus science refused to believe that ulcers were caused by bacteria
@@nathanlewis42 absolutely ; very few scientists are willing to admit they are / were wrong
Tom, you really ought to give up those blue pills. They're very harmful to your brain. Compared to the effects of volcanism and cosmic impactors on climate, fossil fuels are a joke. That was a counter culture crusade started by some very silly, ignorant people back in the 60s and it's long past time we let go of it. I've heard "the sky is falling" from the climate freaks since I was a kid, but it was always 100% baloney, same as now. We 're on fossils until thorium or fusion get going, so let's get on with it
@@nathanlewis42 Nathan, you're joking. Max Planck famously said "Science changes when it's proponents die"
This is a PHENOMENAL summary of the burgeoning floating offshore wind industry! Thank you so much!
As someone that spent 10 years working on a boat , I am very impressed !
As a light commissioner for a small Municipal electric company in MA, we see offshore wind as one of the few sources of power that can meet our future requirements for non-emitting sources of power and have written to the BOEM to approve permitting so we have this as a power purchase option. We are well aware of the 30+ lawsuits funded by William Koch of Osterville, MA (Of Koch oil fame), that eventually drove Jim Gordon of smaller Cape Wind project out of business. We hope the developers of this Vineyard wind project will persevere against such opposition, as this is the obvious choice for powering the North East of the US and if we could synchronize this with Quebec hydro for some energy storage we have a very feasible way to get to net zero.
Good man. I'm letting you off for your Quebec Hydro slighting of Ontario Hydro One and general Anglophobic Francophonyness.
Floating wind turbines combined with utilizing wave energy would be really cool. Plus one could use compressed air underwater for energy storage. Combining multiple sources of renewable energy in the same place just seems like a natural progression
This 100%
The economics of floating offshore wind energy is already difficult.
Joining to it a failed technology would make it inviable.
I'm an inventor; have a patent in this area and I've worked on a vertical axis wind turbine in S. Texas . I'm a fan of gyroscopes and I believe a solid gyroscope disc at the base of a deep sea turbine would stabilize it and also provide some flywheel energy steadying effect. The gyroscope being solid will minimize the drag of the water on the disc and the disc will need to be a substantial fraction of the diameter of the blades. It may be that two or more discs are required. They can be made of concrete filled fiberglass and spun via friction drive planetary wheels. They'll need some kind of electrical charge or something to keep the barnacles off.. I think. anti-torque disc will also be required.
8:11 "... team refers to as 'floaters' --- which is unfortunate".
Gotta love the British sense-of-humor.
Oh I think I dig it now, I really missed that one.
It gets better than that, the guys who work on these thing are call Klingons, and they always moor on the starboard bow! 🤣
Excellent factual video
Love the floating model at the start of program. Well presented and informative.Many thanks
An added benefit is that they function as sanctuaries for marine life. Only park staff can enter the area and the fixings act as natural reefs
Your diction, phrasing and grammar are invariably perfect - almost. Which is probably why I noticed "economy of scales" where I expected "economies of scale." Sorry to nitpick. Love your videos.
Oh no he said it correctly; he means that weighing scale prices are falling, which is useful because really big scales are needed for checking how much the turbines weigh.
@@danyoutube7491 I stand corrected (as I once remarked to my chiropractor.)
@@grinpick Lol that's brilliant :)
You two, am I going to have to take your _just have a think_ away?
@@Robert_McGarry_Poems We'll stop.
I work as a marine engineer, and a couple of colleagues of mine actually worked on Hywind Scotland!
Due to the massive amounts of capital bound up in each construction, the offshore marine industry tends to be quite conservative and many current floating wind turbine concepts reflect this. However, there are many fascinating and radical ideas on how to bring LCOE down that are being explored by various companies. To mention a few: Hexicon, Wind Catching Systems, X1 wind and SeaTwirl. More incremental improvements have already been made since Hywind Scotland, and at the new site Hywind Tampen, Equinor (the developer) expects a 40% cost decrease compared to the former.
Lots of companies as well as the EU are investing heavily in floating offshore wind technology, and it's likely there will be a massive amount of floating wind farms built in the next decade. Can't wait to see how it all turns out!
Do you have any idea how many wind turbines the world is going to need to provide power for everyone's needs?
@@Les_S537 Around 1.5 million? Or so Google says if you want to power the entire world with wind turbines 😂
@@HunterCadre That number is way off...
Today, wind power accounts for about 2% of the world's energy needs... But how many wind turbines does it take to make that 2%?
Over 400,000
Do the math.
Let's say that you want to power half of the world at today's energy levels, how many would you need, knowing the fact I just gave you?
Tens of millions, just to power half of the world's energy requirements.
Now
Keep in mind that the world's energy requirements are set to double or even triple in the next 100 years due to everyone moving to EV's for transportation.
You're looking at double or triple tens of millions needed, just to power half the world.
And how long do these wind turbines last before mechanical stresses and general wear and tear force us to tear them down and replace them?
20 years, 25 tops if you maintain them assiduously.
So you want us to build tens of millions of these wind turbines, and every 20-30 years we have to tear them all down and rebuild them back?
Never gonna work, friend.
@@Les_S537 Well I assume that 400 000 number of yours includes the itty-bitty ones too, the turbine size has increased over the years and keeps increasing. As far as offshore is concerned at least, new turbines are basically 7MW++.
But, while comprehensive energy strategy is not my area of expertise, generating 100% or even 50% of the world's energy through wind turbines is a little silly to me. Imo transitioning away from burning fossil fuels will require every alternative at our disposal, and yes, nuclear too.
@@HunterCadre Have you looked the the Generation IV nuclear reactor models at all yet?
Do me a favor, go look up the Molten Chloride Salt Fast Reactor (MCSFR) by Elysium Industries.
Ed Pheil, the designer of this reactor, worked with the US Navy for 32 years designing and building nuclear reactors for our naval ships and submarines.
His new design, the MCSFR, has two main purposes...
Purpose 1 is to provide mankind with abundant energy
Purpose 2 is to take every bit of the nuclear waste we have generated over the last 70 years, and recycle every bit of it.
I'm paraphrasing, of course, but his reactor can take all the long lived nuclear waste that takes tens to hundreds of thousands of years to become safe, and transmute it into lots of lighter elements that we can use in our modern society.
Elements like neodymium.
Neodymium is used in high end magnets.
EVs use neodymium magnets in EV motors.
Some of the other elements this reactor can make are:
molybdenum
ruthenium
rhodium
strontium
zirconium
palladium
etc
Because this reactor is molten salt cooled instead of water cooled like today's reactors are, you can never have a meltdown like you can in today's reactors.
As we all know by now, if one of today's nuclear reactors loses the ability to be cooled by circulating water, the water will boil off, the nuclear material will meltdown and explode, and then you've got lots of radioactive waste spread all over the surrounding countryside.
This can't happen in a molten salt cooled reactor.
The MCSFR is 1/20th the size of one of today's nuclear reactors, why?
Because today's nuclear reactors are massive structures that require complicated and costly triple redundant safety systems to ensure they never have a meltdown.
Because molten salt reactors don't have to worry about a meltdown, you don't have to install all those safety systems.
Thus these newer Generation IV molten salt reactors will be much *MUCH* cheaper to build and operate.
Offshore wind is bae and US needs to get on it faster. I'm glad we're finally adding some new projects.
Fantastic video! The future is great!
The way you just so casually put the turbine onto the water and let it flop was perfect. the way you kept the straight face is what brought me to laughter. Bravo chap.
Thank you again for another great video. It is desperately important that the sort of content you produce is put out there and made accessible to a wide audience! Which you do such a brilliant job of doing. :)
Much appreciated! Thank you :-)
@@JustHaveaThink Thank you, too, for these intesting selections of subjects in your channel! All subjects you have chosen are really game-changing. There are some moments where for a non-native speaker it is difficult to follow your speech (mumbling) and others are very clear. Greetings from Germany.
Liked this one very much. Especially how the towers are held upright.
One thing that wasn't really talked about here is: How to power is transmitted from the offshore turbine to wherever it is actually being used.
A somewhat important detail in light of the fact that the further power is transmitted the more of it gets lost along the way.
True... I saw one claim that having hydrogen production attached to these wind farms and then a hydrogen pipeline to shore rather than a transmission cable would be more efficient, or at least have smaller transport losses. I am skeptical of that claim, as you'd have losses electrolysing the hydrogen, especially considering you'd first have to desalinate ocean water. So, I dunno. Would love to read an objective comparison of the two methods.
With rising sea level coastal big cities will have to be rebuilt. Why not make floating cities then tow them out to be near the wind farms? 🤣
With a floating transformator that collect all the energy in the park and send it to the shore.
There are an awful lot of site that are no further offshore then existing North Sea farms - it's just that the water is deeper than 30m (Scotland, California, Japan, Spain, and the majority of coastal countries in fact). So the power situation is no different from what has already been proven in the North Sea.
These deep water developments are 20-40km from shore in most cases. The electrical losses aren't that significant, and are probably on par with a solar development in a desert, for example.
This channel is a credit to you. Excellent, trustworthy coverage on the exciting renewable energy developments which is essential to our collective future.
Wow, thank you!
@@JustHaveaThink I follow another much smaller channel, DrKStrong by a retired climatologist which I recommend to you. He lays out AGW in graphic detail accessible to the layman and sets the liars straight. I don't consider myself a "green activist" but as a father, I find the stark reality of AGW frankly depressing. The peer review literature speaks for itself; with caveats and without hyperbole, the conclusions are all the more frightening.
Your channel is a wonderful antidote to that, you give a vision of a better future grounded in real science and engineering.
I'm truly grateful to you for that on a personal level.
"called floaters..which is unfortunate" haha always a funny quip. Great video Dave. These are hopeful projects. Glad that talented people are doing this work.
Wonderfully positioned
Very underrated channel in science community. Sir great work on the wind turbines but can you cover about the tidal energy and it's comparison with wind energy
hows a nearly 300k subs channel "underrated". theyre doing very well.
well it will all amount to nothing unless your lot keep the one eyed trouser snake quiet and stop adding to the utterly grotesque population increase there, in less than a single human lifetime - more than 1.1 BILLION extra people! Bloody ludicrous.
@@IzinTheBzin viewing is not doing.
@@terencefield3204 looks like we've managed to knacker our knackers, probably PFAS chemicals or some such madness, either way populations are set to drop.
@@terencefield3204 India's population share of the world in 1AD was 32%, now it's 17.7%. That means we have lower growth rate than rest of world.
You've done it again ... a life enriching video. Thank you
Hi Dave. This is an excellent video for explaining the challenges of expanding wind power further offshore. We love to share info with you about a new technology we're working on that will make it more affordable and easier to anchor turbines offshore - especially in bedrock - thus expanding the available seafloor real estate for offshore power farms.
Nice video, nice audio, nice subject matter, nice conversational voice, nice editing and nice length. You big show off.
As usual, a brilliant analysis our current energy options! Always enjoy and learn so much!
Just stumbled upon this video, it was very informative, well paced and thought out. Subscribed
Another perfectly explained videos on one of the most important and interesting topics of our time. Great job, keep up the good work!
the really exciting thing about offshore wind is that the costs have go down so much in the past 10 years that many upcoming offshore wind projects have PPAs in the 50-70 Euros/MWh mark. That is a genuinely tremendous achievement for the wind turbine industry.
My floaters are usually accompanied by wind as well
Good job, the floating off shore turbine has been a Think rattling around in my mind for some time. Good to see a clear and well researched review
As usual, excellent work! What came to mind for me was using an oil tanker size ship filled with batteries, being charged by multiple smaller wind turbines mounted on top. When fully charged to ship would simply sail to port and plug into the grid.
The attempt to float the turbine at the beginning of the video is not a failure which ends the project. It gives the inspiration to build deep sea-currents turbines instead. :)
I have a feeling some of these companies would be worthy investments given the ocean-sized opportunity to grow
Glad you do not run my portfolio
@@terencefield3204 each is welcome to choose their flavours...
@@terencefield3204 Why could none of those companies be a good investment as a part of a portfolio?
@@reahs4815 high risk high reward.
barely anyone is willing to invest with a high chance of loosing it all
(most companies in startup markets fail)
but if you invested in the right one .. it easily ten maybe hundredfolds your invest .. IF you chose the right one
Shell ( oil) is the major for the first big offshore wind farm , mayflower wind . whether or not the electricity part works they will get Huge sums of gov subsidy money . that's where the money is . warren buffet , no fool , is invested in wind power but states flatly it is just to take advantage of large sums of gov money .
Dave, great report once more ! There is so much potential, northern Canada has also of great options on, unfortunately the isolation of those giants add a number of logistical headaches.
I had a chat with a lady who works for a Wind farm company here in the USA, I inquired about the impact of adding back tape to make the blades more visible for bird, thermal impact of the tapes color and weight effect on the blades. She confirmed they were testing these ideas in the field on beta sites and to collect more evidence (pros and cons).
Floater, unfortunate? Hope your happy, I'm now covered in my beer. 😂😂😂😂😂
Every one of your info packed videos is a brilliant piece of work. Thank you.
Shameless apple polisher.
@@grindupBaker Constructive reply. Thank you. My world is a better place knowing your thoughts.
I wonder, if you are running the infrastructure out there anyway, if it might not make sense to combine it with wave or current power.
I found your videos earlier this year and have watched many many of them. Some was just to get a second/third/fourth opinion/facts on our climate and how we are effecting it. I thank you for all your dedication and work in spreading this information around. I've tried to do my part over here across the pond, but it's a uphill battle that I see little chance of winning. You mentioned in different video something along the lines of what we can do individually; and your biggest push was to contact the government representatives of the people and such then ask them their plans and such. I myself also believe that the only way to get a solution implemented and underway is in a sense the same thing. For my simple mind I just call it protesting. It means nothing alone though with enough it could make a difference. I've been racking my brain trying to figure out just how something like this... a large enough protest to get the people with power/money to do something. Even in this day n age it just breaks my heart to see the outline of our future and hold so little power to change it for the better.
Please let me know what (if anything) we could do as an average joe with no real funds or power to ensure the future of our humanity with our home? Cause if it's just protest.. then we need quite a bit more joes haha.
Thank you again! I love watching your videos even if they often contain depressing facts that everyone should know about our home. I spread the word as much as I can!
Another superb video by Dave.
I believe that future of wind energy, onshore, offshore or deep sea, lies in bladeless wind turbines which are far more environmentally responsible, far lower weight and dimensions and will provide enormous amounts of electricity to power all the electric cars and electric trucks.
Brilliant as always Dave, the potential of Offshore wind is stupendous.
Turbine life does not make land installations viable. Are you kidding me ?
how about combining offshore wind and tidal into a single unit. put an underwater turbine on the sub surface bit. double the bang for the buck.
How about OTEC as well?
Yes, havesting tidal energy as wel seems a good idea. All in one solutions, love them.
How is it going as a poet?
@@terencefield3204 Angry trolls always expose their IQ...
yes but as this is a big scam to steal tax payers money , your idea will never be looked at
First positive report I've heard in a month!
Watch SpaceX build the future in Texas.
I caught that one David, “the Blow hanging fruit”. Good one!
It's great to see Aberdeen reborn as a centre of excellence for offshore windfarm and wind turbine implementation after the trauma of Piper Alpha.
Why use the three blade turbines? I know the vertical turbines are less efficient, but the structure could be easier to stabilise in rough seas.
Vertical axis turbines are much less efficient and they have other problems, they have high cyclical mechanical stress, cyclical energy production, which are bad for longevity and electricity quality. There is also the problem of how do you reduce the power when the wind is too strong.
If this design is less efficient, it means it needs more materials to achieve same power output, so it increases costs.
That's why no one has built a vertical axis turbine more than 1MW.
@@niconico3907 ok, thanks.
Search here for Rosie wind turbine and you will find the answers. She even has a video about blade design.
I know there's been a couple of attempts, though other than pointing to the general VAWT disadvantages I couldn't say for sure why they have failed so far. There's actually a startup called SeaTwirl working right now trying to make floating VAWTs a reality.
@@michaeldalton5220 I looked at Seatwirl website, its a complete joke. They can't compare at all with existing wind turbine manufacturers.
Their working prototype is 30kW, which is 400 times smaller than the biggest working prototype of offshore wind turbine Haliade X 12MW(soon to be 14). And 30kW is 200 time smaller than the 6MW hy wind scotland floating offshore wind turbine.
Sea twirl is currently developping a 1 MW turbine, which (if it works) will be 6 to 12 times smaller than competitors.
But they look to have an interesting concept.
Not only off shore wind power but also; artificial reefs with Biorock carbon sequestration coral reefs (key, together with sea grass) to complete the carbon gettering cycle, water purification and fish sanctuaries. These will remove carbon from the ocean and purify sea water provide sanctuaries for marine life. A complete concept of deep sea terraforming yields; food, materials, energy, filtration and permanent carbon sequestration and ocean restoration. Closer to shore a wind farms with Biorock Seagrass can reduce coastal erosion.
Did the estimates provided include transmission losses? I have heard that a great deal of energy is lost in long distance electrical transmission lines. I do not know if this is accurate or what variables affect the losses. But now that the grid competes with on premise generation (is that called co-generation, via solar or gas fuel cell?), the extra transmission loses due to the distance to some deep water installations could be significant?
For submarine cables the current is converted to HVDC from AC (AC has high capacitive loss when conductors are in water) then the HVDC is converted back to AC on land .These are the main reason for losses.
The technology is in use all over the world. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HVDC_Inter-Island
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HVDC_projects#Australia_and_Oceania
Thanks to both of you!
The transmission loss from the planed link between Singapore and Australia was approximately 10%, very acceptable for getting those great opportunities.
Once the renewably powered electricity is onshore we can harness it in grid batteries, residential batteries, electric heated floors inside highly insulated homes and in electric vehicles.
floating wind often won't be that much further offshore than some of the existing deployments. But its opens up more sea area as you're not depth limited. Even at double the present distances the losses are small in the grand scheme of things.
Your videos are really appreciated! Perfect format and presentation.
Here in the UK we should keep building offshore wind turbines.
This technology looks amazing and hopefully we will be able to transition to a carbon zero economy by 2050.
And I am a pink porpoise.
Turbine life does not make land installations viable. Are you kidding me ?
@TheFastAndThe Dead Scotland's population is 5 mln. The rest of UK's population is 60 mln.
@@sodalitia And Bermuda is 71,000 but burns heavy oil or diesel with little or no renewables. What is your point?
@@bluebox2000 My point is exactly what I said in the comment. Also my second point is: read the entire thread and then curb your whataboutism.
OK, I am having a think. I enjoyed your presentation, thanks.
Where there's a way, there's a will. Let's hope these prototypes work well. Being out of sight and out of mind is a positive attribute for costal communities of both humans and wildlife. Optimistic.
Well, yes, other than the "wildlife" of the oceans... As long as the underside is built to keep the fishes of the sea, safe. There has to be a way to get that energy to the land. Is it cables being used, or what?? Entanglement is a huge issue. All in all, way better than the petro platforms mucking up the oceans.
@@chinookvalley The petro platform engineers should have lots to bring to the green offshore wind party.
Yeah, a wind turbine weighing more than 10,000 tons sounds a great idea.
great video as always 👍😀
interesting subject and problems.
thanks for sharing your experience with all of us 👍😀
Great video as always. What about connecting the floating turbines to grids? Is it still realistic to use cables or does it make more sense to put an electrolysed there and produce green hydrogen? Particularly if salt water electrolysis becomes a reality. Thanks
Use less energy is another good option. Otherwise can't just do anything else then marvel at the great ingenuity people have at their capacity, and if we would just be willing to pay what it cost to keep this planet, with us on it, for another few hundred years we wouldn't have to scrimp and save to compete with oils. I gladly pay more for that certainty. Thank you for the great inspiring channel!
Forced energy poverty is a terrible policy.
@@orkin2525 Poverty from what? Overconsumption? I'm not a economist so I won't try to tread these waters too much, but spending your money on something that gives you back a better profit in the long run seems sensible anyhow.
Energy reduction does not equate to energy poverty. Energy efficient buildings, appliances, manufacturing, etc. are an essential component of our ability to become fossil fuel / carbon emissions free. Buildings can readily run on 50% of the energy they did just a decade ago. And unfortunately it seems we need government mandates to make this happen because it’s 5-10% more expense to build this way.,
@@julianugentarchitect if we reduce usage to the point where wind and solar can provide enough power it will be energy poverty for those without hydro and geothermal. If you want people to stop burning stuff to get stuff done there has to be a huge amount of cheap, clean energy as an alternative. The other option is reverting everything back to people power and substance farming.
Floating hydrogen factories that can fuel big ships.
Could utilize deep ocean wind power to generate fresh water in situ for certain locales like California and countries adjacent to the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas. Power would be consumed in reverse osmosis or vacuum evaporators to produce pure water or further electrolysized for H2. Accordingly, laying semi-permanent undersea cable for power transmission would not be required.
Still concerned about the impact of plastic waste from the wear of the blades(namely bisphenol A), and what the noise may do to the ecosystem. Would be nice with some more independent studies on this matter first. Much can probably be solved in how the blades are produced
the predecessor to offshore wind turbines
Out by Ebeltoft Ferry Port they are close by, they stand on a stone pier. Originally, 18 turbines were erected in 1985, which at the time was Northern Europe's largest wind farm, and at the beginning of the year 2000 they were replaced with just 4 large ones.
The windmills are fine and just fit into the landscape.
Easy to park and enjoy nature and windmills.
Dude, that thumbnail title has created some mental imagery that is going to stick around for a while . “Deep Ocean Floaters” brings to mind GodIlla/Kong polluting the sea after a very fatty meal the night before…
So glad I wasn’t the only one thinking that 👏
Marine Power Systems (Swansea) has designed and tested a prototype floating platform that can carry not only a wind turbine, but if desired, wave-energy collectors as well.
The problem with all this is, as always, speed of installation and energy density. You hallowed the massive installation of 50MW!, whereas Hinkley C will generate 3.2GW, 64x the power and entirely constant with significant inertial mass to help stabilise grid frequency. We absolutely need to pursue wind power, but it simply won't work without nuclear.
The past month saw wind generation produce an average of 3GW, despite an installed capacity of 25GW. We don't have the storage capacity for a day's power requirements, let alone a month's (arguably more than total global power storage).
I worked in the nuclear industry for 31 years and I have to say nuclear is great but it takes the investment of a country to get a power plant online. Then there is the long decommissioning to think of.
@@fastfreddy19641 I don't disagree, various studies have shown that if Hinkley C had been government backed it would have cost half as much and the decommissioning has been built into modern EPR reactors.
EDF exports €22bn of electricity every year, with much of that from reactors built in the 70s, the reason they don't have money for the decommissioning is because they've bought half the grids of Europe.
@@LudvigIndestrucable yes. Hartlepool, an AGR paid its mortgage off years ago. Shame the CEGB still didn't own it as we could had used the profit to finance Hc and wind. 👍
@@fastfreddy19641 Yes, the AGR fleet has proved really reliable, but didn't meet their initial marketing hype (online refueling and removable fuel rods), the initial hope was to sell the design around the world which would have significantly offset the design costs.
This is actually a wider issue that France partially solved, one of the easiest ways to make things more affordable is scale. The French pushed through a massive investment in a nuclear fleet, though their PWRs were arguably inferior to the British AGR design.
@@LudvigIndestrucable your right. Hartlepool was deigned for reduced power on load refuelling but we had to come off and have refuelling outages which changed how we operated. We also had to invest in the AFSF. That said they are very good reactors with very low radiation exposure to the workforce. 👍
Any companies currently building a wind turbine and a water turbine combined in the same structure?
Excellent presentation and thought provoking as always.
Another application for floating windmills exists in geoengineering ideas for freezing the arctic. The power would be used to pump water to the surface to thicken the arctic ice.
I think I saw that they could be used for marine
cloud brightening as well, but not sure on that.
How thick do you want the Arctic ice to be? Have you been in the Arctic and measured the thickness of the ice? In January it is -60 degrees. Ice melts middle of July and middle of August freezes up to 7 feet thick.
@@robertkat, well I remember a time when the US nuclear subs would go up to the north pole at minimum and smash through 3 meters of ice to surface. So that is how much ice I want...not sure we are prepared to act accordingly however. So another realistic answer would be, any ice over the north pole would be grand. Call it an aspirational goal because to do that, we need all the arctic partners to agree. Russia, for now anyway is a rather large impediment to any geoengineering.
Commenting to support the channel. Great video 👍
I personally think if we focus on $ everyone will be willing to move away from fossil fuels.
While floating wind is a good start, they will in the end lose out to combined platforms. The current focus is on reducing the cost of the floating hull as a way to reduce the cost of electricity. There are two problems with that approach; first it is a self limiting solution (there is only so small you can get and hold up a 15MW turbine), second even if I reduced the hull cost to zero I would only reduce the electricity price about 12%. Hull cost is only one of more than 20 major cost items most of which dont change with the number of energy systems. Combined platforms, which use combinations of wind and waves, or really crazy ones like our that combine as many systems as we can, share theses costs out. The result is a 25%+ reduction in electricity cost, a reduction in the total number of platforms, a higher capacity factor (meaning less need for storage), and spare payload that can be used for other value added activities. The math is too simple, eventually the hybrids will win out wind only installations.
Loving the jokes...
I'm no engineer, but that Scottish design seems sturdier than the GE one to me.
The four point under the surface with the stage mooring design will be a lot more stable that the anchored buoy. Even with a lot of extra weight to dampen the movement it will flex a lot more.
@@bknesheim if it really relies on active damping, that is going to be a big issue. What if there is a failure in that system?
@@assepa "Tension leg platform " is just all over in the oil industri and this is page describe the system:
www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/tension-leg-platforms
The Scottish design comes from the Norwegian oil company Equinor (previously Statoil). I'm skeptical of the amount of material that goes into that design which comes with a substantial carbon footprint compared to other designs. Also, they can pretty much only be built at yards in the Norwegian fjords. There are many other designs in the "semi-submersible" family that are more promising at scale.
Deep-ocean offshore wind is a great source of power. OTEC and ocean current power are two sources of power that should receive more backing. The baseload power OTEC and ocean current power can both provide is absolutely enormous, and can create additional revenue streams such as trace element extraction.
I prefer the idea of capturing more “low hanging fruit” of onshore wind, and quell the objections to views being spoilt on the grounds that we cant afford to be that fussy given the existential crisis we face. Local distributed power generation is likely to be the eventual future as it is the least wasteful and community driven projects are essential to sustainability of our society structure. Great to build some mega offshore to make Nuclear pointless and quell the base load sticklers, but like any one option, all avenues need to be followed, and I fear relying on really big scale plant of any kind is counter-productive in some ways.
The arguement of a natural autocrat; socialists love to push people about, and this is your opportunity, eh?!?! Nuclear? Perish the thought - the Greens have spoken! ( Idiots).Nuclear is not 'pointless' despite your obvious prejudice.
@@terencefield3204 Sounds like you have Murdoch Syndrome.
The simple fact is nuclear is the most expensive electricity generation ever devised. How's Hinkley Point C going for you? Or any of the other many years delayed and many billions over budget nuke plants under construction. Then there is the radioactive waste to deal with for thousands of years. Nuclear is dead end.
All different types of renewable energy like solar, wind and geothermal will be the only way forward in a capitalist society where the least costly product always wins.
You are a capitalist, aren't you?
@@bluebox2000 😳... too many like you.
I will tell you a secret: not because many people says the same... they should be right. Do you understand what cero carbon emitions means?
Onshore wind has lots of negative impacts, and a lot of the good sites have been taken. Sure we could deploy them in the deserts .....
@@lucienpv - "cero carbon emitions" means the waste emitted by a fish in the mackerel family
Scotland’s wind farm operators have been handed more than £230 million to shut down their turbines.
The record windfall for 2020, funded by energy bill-payers, is up from £130 million in 2019 - an increase of nearly 81 per cent in a year.
Experts estimate the amount of discarded energy is equivalent to about 14 per cent of total annual electricity consumption north of the Border.
10:58 it's easy to build 6 turbines, but 10+ is super challenging? So why not produce just 6 at a time? 😆
Suuuper slow roll out…
@@TomTom-cm2oq sure. As long as they're rolling them out.
Also, six of these giants generates a lot of energy!
Nice logic :-)
State of Maine just signed a law that prohibits offshore wind turbines in their waters. I guess not everyone in the world wants renewable energy. Fishing industry won this time. This is why you need to go further offshore with these turbines.
I’m thinking sky sails out of Germany has a lighter footprint offshore with quicker deployment and lower cost maintenance.
"....which the development team refer to as floaters; which is unfortunate."
🤣
Your dead-pan delivery is divine. I'd wager that most of the audience (i.e.: non-Brits) had no idea that was a wonderfully juvenile joke! 👌
10:19: I know this is a green energy channel, but the engineer in me is curious on how oil platforms drill for oil in rough seas like shown here? I'm always under the impression that the platforms are steady, but that obviously only pertains to shallow water platforms where they can easily anchor to the sea floor.
They must have flexible pipes, beats me too.
Watch the excellent video coverage of the gulf oil spill disaster a decade ago. The structure of these rigs, on the surface and on the sea bottom, as well as the efforts that have to be taken when a storm is imminent to shut things down and restart after things calm down, are excellent to behold.
I'm not sure but I would very very surprised if they continue working in extreme rough conditions. They most likely sit it out and wait for calmer waters.
Good informational video 👍
Can I respectively suggest that you find some alternative to "enough to power XXX homes". Most of us don't know how much "a home" uses or how many there are in the country. "... enough to supply 0.15% of the national grid" gives a much better indication of its significance and how many we'd need to make a large contribution to the nation's requirements. Keep up the good work!
Holy crap, one of those GE wind turbines is almost double the amount all of New Zealand uses in a year
Grant - I didn't catch the output mentioned in the video, but I think we need more than one of these. According to the EA government website New Zealand consumed about 38,800 gigawatt hours (GWh) of electricity in 2017. One Haliade-X 14 MW turbine can generate up to 74 GWh of gross annual energy. I haven't finished my coffee yet so I'll leave the calculation...
Makani is an interesting option, it’s a tether glider and doesn’t need the same amount of support due to not having the mass / center of gravity issues by a conventional tower.
Haven’t watched the video through yet, so sorry if this was mentioned already!
Great video!
once again a great video. Well done. I suppose the obvious thing to say is what a great opportunity to reopen the shipyards in the UK and provide work building these mammoth structures, or at least part thereof. Wheebles wobble but they don't fall down, if you can remember these toys from long ago.
Exceptional episode as always.
Thank you for that opening bit - I needed a good laugh today :)
Nice video too!
Great vid, Full of facts and balance over hype. +1 Sub
i like the way you explain things.
Great video. Thank you.
Some assessment of the level of global warming resulting from wind turbines (once mentioned in an Economist magazine science article) would be interesting.
The question is whether these LCOE & equivalent (I hereby name LCO2OE) "greenhouse gases (GHGs)" assessments are comprehensive & reliably accurate. Would need a panel of impartial (do those exist ?) paid experts or a dedicated hobbyist who didn't mind his/her life being consumed/wasted to get that well settled. It certainly won't be me, nor will it be you I infer.
@@grindupBaker Only a basic understanding of physics is required to know that the energy produced by wind farms turns into heat. The Chinese built a windfarm but forgot that each turbine slows the wind speed . The result was turbines that did not move when the wind came from a given direction. This slowing is turned into heat. It would be a good idea to understand the process, if only to improve the design of wind farms.
Thanks again for another amazing video. You're one of the few channels where I turn on all notifications :D
Wow, thanks!
1996 - I proposed a multi-method floating green energy pad. Waves (driving a sort of piston), wind, and solar.
Renewables are only expensive because it is compared to the low cost of fossile energy. When we agree to tax consumption of fossile fuels to finance society's cost of its impact, the whole picture will change. Also, agree to the comments on ecconomy of scale. New tech is allways comparatively expensive until infrastructure and production is developed.