Largest Wind Turbines Being Installed Offshore
by Justin Thomas, Virginia on 08. 8.06
A German company called RePower Systems is in the process of installing the world's largest wind turbines offshore in the Scottish North Sea. The turbines are rated at 5MW, and have a rotor blade diameter of 126 metres (413 feet) – the size of two soccer fields when spread out. They've been operating as a prototype at the onshore location of Brunsbüttel with an availability of over 95% since 2004.
RePower says the wind turbines (each weighing 900 metric tonnes in total) will be transported 25 kilometres on the open sea at the beginning of August, to be mounted on special jacket structures anchored underwater at a depth of 44 metres with the help of a floating crane. A premiere not just for REpower, but also for offshore wind energy in general: never before have turbines been assembled in such deep water.
REpower is participating in the "Beatrice Demonstrator Project" to test the performance of the 5 megawatt turbine on the open sea and to take a step closer to achieving its goal of making wind energy competitive. Two 5Ms are to be installed near the Beatrice oil field in Moray Firth, 25 kilometres off the Scottish East coast and at a water depth of over 40 metres. The demonstrator project is part of the EU-supported "DOWNVinD" project, Europe's largest research and development programme in the field of renewable energies with a total volume of EUR 30 million. Talisman Energy (UK) and Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) are the coordinators of the project, in which a large number of research and development organisations are participating from all over Europe. REpower is the exclusive turbine supplier.
Website: RePower 5M
See also this older article from RenewableEnergyAccess about the 5M turbines.
95% uptime? Thats 5% downtime. Over a year thats 18 days. Does the mount of electricity it produces offset the amount of energy it takes to sent the boat and maintenance people out for 18 days?
An uptime of 95% is not very good. Normal windturbines have an uptime better than 98%.
However, the Repower 5M at Brunsbüttel is a prototype. That probably means that some child diseases had to be ironed out.
When you know that the energy needed for the entire production and dismanteling of a land-based windturbine is earned back in less than half a year, I would not worry about the energy cost of some boottrips.
You are assuming that it is broke during that 5%. It may be due to to fast or slow wind speeds.
I think that JiltedCitizen is right. Wind turbines are usually very low maintenance. What usually stops production is too little or too much wind.
If the wind really blows within production parameters 95% of the time on average in that area, that's quite good.
JiltedCitizen and MGR - I think the first two points are correct. Availability means when the machine is available and his nothing to do with wind. When you are talking about wind, then you usually speak in terms of capacity factor which is in the 25-40% range for most sites (I believe).
This is rock and roll: if electricity produced by offshore wind could undercut gas/coal fired power stations then market forces would take over and the whole thing just run away.
Pity there has been such a hike in the steel price the last few years - otherwise it might already have been the case (I just hope it's not because the steel is needed to build lots of new motor cars as motoring gets cheaper and cheaper...)
I believe they will gain a lot of money from this project or else they won`t do it. And what is more important - this energy is green like grass unlike those coal-powered power plants. I live 35km away from one of those and I can still see the smoke it is producing. Please excuse my bad english and thanks for taking the time to read this.
Wind power is novel idea however it will still be a few years untill the idea takes effect. I live 20 miles away from 15 large wind turbines. personaly I love them but my peers still prefer coal, they say that the wind mills are ugly and cluder the view, but they dont mind massive colums of smoke. The town i live in also has a fair sized hydoelectric plant that was purchesed by a nearby coal power plant, aparently the coal profite margin is great enough to let the hydro plant sit idle further insulting me. Im tired of paying $700 pluse to heat my 1200sq ft home, especialy when i step out on my front porch for a cig and can hear the river flowing. $2200 is what it will take for my personal wind turbin and after a one heating season ill never have another utility bill, thats how fast it pays for it self.
wind energy is good but need much money
wind energy is good but need much money