Webinar Review: Challenges with Round 3 Offshore Wind Farms

Yesterday, I watched a Webinar on the challenges ahead with the latest set of Offshore Wind deployment off the UK coast, known as Round 3.

The first speaker, Maf Smith of RenewableUK, discussed the current state of the industry and the ways that RenewableUK were mitigating the problems associated with the huge scales required for Round 3. A particularly interesting point Mr Smith made was around industry confidence. In the last year, a significant proportion of members of RenewableUK have decreased their expectation of GW of offshore wind power to be deployed by 2020. This can be seen at around 7 minutes into the webcast. The fact that projects of this scale under these hostile conditions have never been done before both increases the stakes and potentially increases the challenges faced by the industry.

The second speaker, Matthew Knight of Siemens, discussed in further detail the problems associated with the scale of the Round 3 project, which will be deeper, further and larger than any previous offshore wind projects. Interestingly, his focus was on the advantages of collaboration between all stakeholders, even those that are competitors. The nature of the offshore wind industry (first of a kind, complex, in a hostile environment, huge sums of money at stake) means that collaboration could give huge cost reductions (~20%),  outweighing the potential margins of a more competitive system (~1%). A quote from Mr Knight (at 31 mins) really sums this up well:
"[offshore wind]... cries out for collaboration at all levels."

In my mind, Mr Knight is calling for offshore wind to compete as an industry against other electricity sources (offshore wind, solar, fossil fuel etc) on cost rather than competing on cost within the industry.

Both speakers were really interesting and gave their own take on the potential problems and possible solutions, and I will be watching more Windpower Monthly webcasts in the future to learn more about this industry. I really enjoyed my time working on Round 3 at the Crown Estate so it will be interesting to see how the collaboration aspect of the industry develops; it was definitely something that the Crown Estate was focused on as well.

Overall, definitely worth watching!

The link to the webcast is below.
http://www.windpowermonthly.com/webcasts?commid=90159&source=JHLI

Icelandic plan to export clean electricity could spark European super grid

Iceland has a huge geothermal energy resource, due to its volcanic origins. Plans to transmit this energy through an underwater cable over 745 miles (1198km) long to Europe are currently being considered. The high-voltage, electrical cable would be the longest in the world by far and is one of many international interconnectors that are proposed or in construction, adding to the 15 or so which already exist in Europe. It is part of an ambitious plan to have a highly networked European electricity super grid.

The potential implications of a pan-European super grid are huge. Energy trading would become truly Europe-wide, with large-scale electricity movement possible and prices varying on international levels of supply and demand. There is a long-running debate in Brussels about how exactly to build the EU energy market. The EU believes that ownership unbundling- preventing a firm from having both power generation and transmission assets-  is necessary, but some member states, led by France and Germany, are unconvinced this is the best option [1].

A large-scale international grid in Europe could help solve the problem of unpredictable supply from renewable sources and lack of electricity storage, as the market balances supply by trading surplus renewable-generated electricity with other countries. By having a larger market to sell to, problems like oversupply leading to working wind farms being temporarily turned off could be a thing of the past [2]: this energy could simply be sold to another country instead. This reduces the need for baseload generation such as coal or nuclear plants, which generate at a constant rate.

The plan estimates that Iceland could export 5bn kWh of energy each year, with a predicted return of $350-448 million [3]. The official costs have not been released, but a 1980s study predicts it to be profitable, even in the worst-case scenario of 1500km. A feasibility study has been carried out for the Iceland cable, and failed to find any insurmountable technical difficulties with the idea, although there are clearly engineering challenges associated with laying an underwater cable that far. The race is now on between North Sea countries to convince Iceland to route the cable to their shores. The UK energy minister, Charles Hendry, is heading to Iceland in May to discuss having the UK at the other end of the cable [4].

[1] http://www.euractiv.com/energy/eu-electricity-market-liberalisation/article-169597

[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenpolitics/8978458/10m-cost-of-turning-off-wind-farms.html

[3] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/04/plans-afoot-to-tap-icelands-geothermal-energy-with-745-mile-cable.ars

[4] http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/apr/11/iceland-volcano-green-power

The Future of Wind

I’m working an application to RES, and I have to say that their application form is a lot more enjoyable to write than those of many large energy companies. One of the questions was so interesting that I completely went over the word limit: I’ve decided to write an answer to that question here in more detail. The question is:

WHAT ARE THE CHALLENGES FACING THE WIND INDUSTRY IN THE NEXT 5 YEARS?  

I'm going to split my answer to this question into offshore and onshore wind, as I think that they have different challenges facing them.

Interesting articles

Since there is so much information out there at the moment about renewable energy, I thought I would highlight a few things I've found recently. Hope it's useful!

This week's New Scientist (dated 28th Jan) is a very interesting read. The cover story is about "How clean is green energy?" and essentially discusses the long term issues of large-scale renewable energy gathering. For example, if we put up wind farms everywhere, that will take the energy out of the air and so slow weather systems travelling across the world. Interesting stuff.
There is also a special report explaining "fracking"- a controversial technique for extracting gas. I personally didn't know much about fracking, so it was useful to get a brief explanation, as well as an opinion piece from Mike Stephenson explaining the risks. Definitely worth reading.

The book "Sustainable energy- without the hot air" is one of my favourite books for its clarity and simplicity in explaining our energy problems and how to solve them. There's now another similar book out about sustainable materials: I can't wait to read it! You can access it online for free too, so there's no reason not to.

These are just a few things which will keep me busy for the next few days. There is a huge amount of news and information about renewable energy now, such that it's difficult to keep up. Particularly while doing a full time MSc and looking for a job..

The Future of Energy

Yesterday, I went to a fascinating series of talks as part of "One World Week" here at Warwick. The event was called "The Future of Energy: A Power Struggle". The speakers  included heads of large energy companies, a lawyer specialising in energy and an American researcher into energy systems.

It was really interesting to see where the emphasis was put in the different talks, in terms of the "future energy mix". For example, Kevin McCollough (NPower) thought that nuclear was an inevitable part of our future, whereas David Hone (Shell) focussed on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) as a technology to push, so that we can keep using the current fossil fuels that we do currently. Adrian Gault (Committee for Climate Change) suggested that it would be very difficult to meet our emissions targets for 2050 without significant bioenergy and CCS contribution, with all the new cars sold in 2030 being electrically driven. Mark Jacobson (Stanford) put forward an ambitious model based on Wind, Water and Sun (WWS) which the rest of the panel thought was too lofty a goal.

Macro- vs micro-generation

I was thinking the other day about how the electricity-generating landscape will be different in the future. There seem to be two sides to this: large power plants, generating a large amount of power for a large number of people (macro), or households and businesses generating their own electricity (micro).

There are many good arguments for both sides, and clearly as both exist as markets (there are both large offshore wind farms and small-scale solar systems being built, for example). However, I thought I would have a look at the arguments for both and see which I think is a more realistic option, if we had to pick just one.

I must apologise that this post may be lacking in numerical backup: I am writing this in a (rare) break from revision, and wish only to give an indication of the pros and cons for each, without concrete numerical evidence.

Human Powered Gym- Part 2

In Part 1 we examined the use of cardio machines (specifically a exercise bike) to generate electricity to power various items in the gym.
The conclusion of Part 1 was that a normal gym goer could power the machine, charge his phone and maybe power a light or two. Alternatively, he could power the machine and the stereo system.

That's for one person. What about if we have loads of machines, with some being used by people at a certain time, and others not (i.e a gym)?
Let's take the gym I go to as an example. It's a relatively small gym, with 6 upright bikes, 2 recumbant bikes (which I will regard as equivalent for the energy-generating purpose), 8 treadmills, 6 cross-trainers and 4 rowing machines, along with various weights machines and free weights.

If all of the bikes are used at the same time (they never are, but let's assume) then the total power being produced will be 56 x 8 = 448W.                                  [This 56W value comes from Part 1]

 However, I reckon that on average only about half of the machines are used at any one time. This means that we have half the power (224W) to use.


This will be just about enough to power the 4 machines (80?W), light up some of the gym (assuming 4 20W fluorescent tubes, 80W), power the music system (which is probably more than 30W as there are quite a few speakers- 50W?) and charge any gadgets the users want to (maximum of 8W).

Hang on, I hear you cry- what about the other machines?

Human Powered Gym?- Part 1

I was in the gym the other day, when I thought "hang on a minute, I'm on a cycling machine, which is just basically making a wheel turn (the basis of electricity generation). Why can't we use this to power the gym- lights, the tvs, the radio, the air conditioning and the machines themselves?"

I suppose a more reasonable question is:
Is it economically viable to install generators attached to the machines in a gym? Noting that:

1.  Almost certainly new exercise equipment would be required.
2. All the machines aren't going to be used all time, so either you need a backup supply system (if the average energy output isn't as large as the energy requirement) or a method of storing the energy (if the average energy is larger than the energy requirement).
3. Generators require something spinning, preferably constantly. This is fine on a bike, but rowing machines, treadmills and cross-trainers won't be quite as simple.

 As I imagined, I am not the first person to think of this idea (nice as it would have been!). In fact, there is a gym in Portland across the pond which does exactly this:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7796215.stm

There are also gyms in Hong Kong using this concept:

http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/03/08/human-powered-gyms-in-hong-kong/

And, as a blue sky "gym concept" island:


http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/human-powered-workout-gym-concept/

For this last article, I am not so interested in the article itself, but the comments after it.

This is all very interesting, but let's examine (using the figures found on the companies websites, as well as other sources I will mention) the actual numbers.