Why Are Floating Wind Turbines So Huge?

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[flo]

Hi I’m currently doing my master in wind energy, so I’m always very happy to see people with a bigger audience talk about it, especially floating wind.

Most of the points you made were really good but you were missing out on one point that is actually among the biggest drivers in size: the bigger the turbine the less of them you need. A 600 MW wind farm needs either 75 8MW turbines or 40 15 MW turbines. This means that you also need less foundations (especially crucial for floating wind where those are massive/super expensive ), but also less cables, less time to install them (expensive installation vessels) and also very important: you need to maintain and operate less of them, which is also a very large cost factor (30% of total project costs).

Anyways thank you for raising interest in offshore wind!
Cheers from Norway ✌🏼

[prophetsspaceengineering]

Apparently, the wind parks in the baltic sea have become something of a haven for marine species because trawlers aren't allowed anywhere near them. Some fish species are already bounced back in numbers due to having some new defacto nature reserves. Fishing is apparently much more lucrative in the areas surrounding the parks, too which might alleviate some of the restrictions. It's not well studied yet but the first articles on this seemed rather uplifting.

[joshmusic]

18 MW for one tower is insane btw. I work on these daily and our biggest on land wind turbines produce 2.33 MW each. One HUGE drawback that is not talked about enough is maintenance. After just 10 years these towers start to deteriorate and need pretty constant maintenance. It’s insanely expensive to do maintenance offshore.

[timholstpetersen]

Fun fact: I worked for Danfoss Solar Inverters for a short time as a Field Test Engineer back in about 2010. We serviced some of the (then) largest solar sites in the World, "Eggebeck" and "Busenwurth" in North Germany.
Busenwurth was about 9 MW and Eggebeck, I think, about 80 MW.
@0:24 in your video, the wind turbines are shown in the middle of vast fields of solar cell parks... and this is what the situation was in Busenwurth (at least) ;-)
When we were out doing our testing, if it was a sunny _and_ windy day, we could be almost certain, that at _precisely_ noon, the solar power would shut down, due to something called 'PLA', or Power Level Adjustment.
It simply meant, that too much power was generated, and somebody had to yield... and it would always be the solar power (of course, since no mechanical stuff was involved). It was just a message being sent to the electronic inverters, that they had to shut off.
It was kind'a fun to stand next to one of the ½ container sized transformer stations and listen to them going from sounding like buzzing with current, to go completely silent in the blink of an eye.
Another fun fact: At the smaller of the two sites.... if you took a walk between all the lines of solar panels (there are three 'atop of each other in each row), it would be about the lenght of a full marathon... or about 42 km !
Eggebeck, on the other hand... and I haven't done the math... but it was said, that if you lined every solar panel up in a single line, they would strech from Denmark to Italy, LOL ;-)

[MeterLP]

Another benefit is that you avoid NIMBYism when you are nowhere near anyones backyard.

[bellofbelmont]

We have a pile of turbines due to be built starting at 20 km (12 miles) off the coast of Newcastle, NSW Australia. Our oldest coal fired power station (Lidell) has just closed down and it will be turned into a battery complex. Good use of existing infrastructure. Thanks for the vid. Jim Bell (Australia)

[seanplace]

The amount of wind turbine information in this video has left my head spinning. I'm absolutely blown away by how large these turbines are getting.

[vasileiosmarkatselis]

It's my first time watching your videos. I am a floating wind consultant. I have not seen such a fantastic explanation anywhere online - I had to reach most of it myself. I am impressed by the way you build your videos, very informative indeed!

[lcasouza]

I really like the way your videos are built. I find the way you balance the potential of the technologies and the drawbacks spot on. On top of that, I find your taste for puns - and the clear effort you make to tell them without cracking up - very entertaining. Thanks for the informative and entertaining videos.

[GodefroydeSavignon]

Three things. 1) the number of GW given is when windturbin are used at 100% all the time : the average % of a working windturbin in real life during a year is around 20% on land (I don't know on sea) 2) The energy produced when not needed by users, say during the night mainly, just goes away, not being stored : huge waste of electricity... Unless we can create mega huge batteries linked to those windturbins, it will never be a good solution for the future compares to nuclear plants. 3) Nuclear plants are already built and connected to the electrical grid : we will destroy them at a gigantic cost while giving also a gigantic amount of money to build new windturbins that also cause ecological problems... Think about it.

[johnjackson]

9:40
So the whole potential of offshore wind energy is just enough to power 650 million homes, had expected much more potential

[brianjonker]

The size of these wind mills is just stunning. As a farmer I run the formula pi R squared and the swept area is larger than many of my fields.

[robertbailey]

I often wonder whether offshore wind turbines could be combined with tidal generators to increase the production of electricity, but reduce costs by using the same structure and transmission lines.

[maxbrazil]

I read a recent study that discovered the cost for removing worn out blades and disposing of the waste will expend more fossil fuel than if they hadn't been built in the first place. Salt water, the wind and sand destroys the blades at a vastly greater rate than land based turbines.

[RegebroRepairs]

At least decades ago, when wind was new, big turbines also had lower range of winds that were useful, so they often were standing still when smaller turbines still worked, because there was either not enough or too much wind. At sea, winds are more steady, so making big turbines make a lot more sense.

[MrArtist]

I work for the world’s largest developer of utility-scale wind and we are now developing several off-shore, floating wind plants. Yes, the CAPEX is higher for off-shore wind but the energy production more than makes up for it, offering some of the lowest cost power available. My company is rapidly developing massive solar, wind + BESS plants, and starting development of SMR’s, which we expect will provide 20% of overall baseload power. Fossil fuel’s days are quickly coming to an end.

[PlaySA]

Dirty air is a huge thing in motor racing as well. Vortices in the air coming off of other cars have a huge effect on your own car's downforce and handling characteristics. The air behind other cars is less dense overall, which is better in the straights, but in the corners your downforce will be ruined by 'dirty air' (aka vortices, air moving at different speeds in the same area and other disturbances) if you're following too close.

[darindooley]

This is a great video. We install these mega wind turbines and are building new vessels to handle the larger turbines in the future. I really appreciate that you bridge the gap that Energy, Oil and Gas will finance, engineer, and install the renewables of the future. The true size of this equipment would blow your mind.

[JeffreyBue_imtxsmoke]

I'm all for these renewable sources of energy but the "elephant in the room" is still storage. I read an article the other day about a "gravity battery" energy storage system that sounds very promising and it doesn't require the use of rare earth or "hard to get" metals.

[TheBitPianist]

The city of Berlin has 3.7 million inhabitants. If those new Vestas windmills are deployed and really can supply 20k households each, it would take about 185 of them to power the entire city. Pretty wild, I think