Norwegian Wind Power Could Become Europe's Battery
by Michael Graham Richard, Ottawa, Canada 
on 05.28.08
Norway and Wind Power, Sitting in a Tree...
What's the best thing you could buy with oil money right now?
Norway's Oil and Energy Minister, Aaslaug Haga, seems to think that wind turbines is a good bet. The scandinavian country is the 5th biggest exporter of oil in the world, but it also has the longest coastline in Europe and lots of strong wind. A 30-page report vy the Energy Council, comprising business leaders and officials, says: "Norway ought to have access to up to 40 terrawatt hours of renewable energy in 2020-2025, of which about half would come from offshore wind power."
Turning Oil Into Renewable Energy
Sufficient wind parks -- totalling 5,000 to 8,000 megawatts installed capacity -- would cost between 100 billion Norwegian and 220 billion Norwegian crowns ($43.89 billion) assuming prices of 20-28 million crowns per installed megawatt. The energy would be equivalent to up to about eight nuclear power plants.
That's a lot of money, but that's also the value of about half a year's oil output for Norway. It would be kind of a giant offset scheme.
Wind Power Even When the Wind Doesn't Blow
One thing that makes Norway - like Quebec - particularly well suited for wind power is the presence of hydro. When the wind blows, you can slow down the flow of water and accumulate it behind the dams, and when the wind doesn't blow, you can open up the valves. And since Norway has about half of Europe's reservoir capacity, it could keep producing even with long periods without wind (which is fairly rare offshore).
Wind Power
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::Enercon E-126: The World’s Largest Wind Turbine (for now)
Green Norway
::Norway: Carbon Neutral by 2030
::Strange But True: Norway Announces First "Ecological Prison"
::Norway's Hydro Develops Floating Wind Turbines
More on Norway's Wind Power Project
::Wind power could make Norway "Europe's battery"
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Kudos to Norway for leading the way with this. Unless we start going in that same direction, we will end up with problems of our own. They are definately forward thinkers there!
These Northern Europe countries... I'm fascinated with every aspect of their living. A good example to follow.
Impressive plan, but there's one key point to be considered IMHO. They say: "the energy would be equivalent to up to about eight nuclear power plants"... fine, but building eight nuclear power plants would cost at least three times less... It's quite a big difference in my world...
most Norwegian houses are heated by electric resistance heaters, which is very inefficient. If the Norwegians would exchange them byheat pumps they could export even more green energy!
they've also got one of the largest infrastructures of hydro power...so they are already (minus oil) pretty darn green (if you like hydro that is)
"but building eight nuclear power plants would cost at least three times less... "
Are you sure? I think it depends if you count all the costs.
There's construction, then there's insurance, then there's fuel and operation costs, then there's decommission costs.
Not to mention that there was a post on TH not long ago about how nuclear power plants were becoming more expensive..
Nuclear plant construction and insurance costs are artificially inflated because of popular fears that are mostly unfounded. In several cases perfectly safe, well built reactors were built and then never turned on because people in towns tens of miles away decided they were afraid. That'll drive up your insurance costs.
A 1GW nuclear plant costs about $2.5-3 billion to build (3 dollars/watt) and fuel is about 2.3 cents/kWh (or $10/watt over a 50 year lifespan). A wind turbine may cost less than that per watt peak, but when you account for the fact that nuclear plants run at full power continuously they are on par in terms of cost and better in terms of reliability. Plus they have a much smaller land footprint. And if you add in additional costs to build any systems to store wind power when the wind is not blowing, nuclear easily wins the cost game. For now.
For now, wherever we can build renewables, we should build them preferentially. Wherever that is not an option and our choice is fossil fuels, no power, or nuclear, we should choose nuclear.
By the way, a coal plant costs about $2 billion today to build and the fuel- coal- costs more per unit energy than nuclear fuel. This is why, in times of low demand, power companies leave nuclear plants running and shut down fossil fuel ones. I am not sure why we keep believing coal is the cheaper power source. A few simple computations show that over the life of any power plant other than wind and solar, the cost of fuel exceeds construction costs several-fold.
PC AN SCPC COAL IS PRESENTLY WELL ABOVE 4000 $ KW INSTALLED. NUKES WELL ABOVE 7000 $ KW + EXTERNALITIES.