Why Are Floating Wind Turbines So Huge? Use code UNDECIDED50 to get 50% off your first Factor box at bit.ly/3UlAohG. With China producing the largest wind turbine yet (a rotor diameter of 260 meters and a rating of 18MW), it got me wondering why they’re so big. They’re almost defying imagination at this point. By sending these skyscraper-sized floating structures out to sea, we can take advantage of faster, more consistent wind energy. That still leaves some big questions, so let’s address the elephant (or maybe the turbine) in the room. Why are floating wind turbines gigantic in the first place? And can the scale of floating wind be practical for meeting the planet’s energy needs? Is floating wind…overblown?
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Does floating offshore wind blow you away? Or has all this turbine talk left you feeling winded? Use code UNDECIDED50 to get 50% off your first Factor box at bit.ly/3UlAohG If you liked this, check out How Solar Panels Are Changing Agriculture - Agrivoltaics Revisited kzhead.info/sun/qttmj7lvlqGHlZE/bejne.html
Interestingly enough, my daughter is on a business trip right now in Scotland and Denmark talking with wind power companies about the potential for wind turbines along the Pacific Northwest coast off of Washington state. She is part of a team from the Seattle area that is gathering information about wind power projects. I will be interested in hearing about her thoughts when she returns back to the United States.
The french are starting a green hydrogen project with floating offshore wind turbines, with the hydrogen platform between the turbines, using directly the electricity to produce the hydrogen directly from the ocean water, and its only one gas pipeline to the french coast where they do the storage. If economicaly successeful, it will be the energy storage way of the future, where all vehichles since plains and trucks and ships can use. Even powerlines can be replaced by hydrogen underground pipelines, and clean up the visual environment from power lines ugly view. And we just have hydrogen powerplants inside cities, creating clean electricity as demand on real time. Just a theory yet.
Matt, you made no mention regarding the electrical power transmission from these floating turbines. I would be interested to know are they favoring HVDC or using AC? And if AC are they low, medium, or high voltage? (1kV & 100kV?)
Matt, have you ever wondered why there are so many of these devices? The simple reason is, even the largest, are tiny in comparison to conventional generators with regard to output capacity. Then factor in the availability factor, 50% for the best when new and more like 35%. on average, onshore is even worse. The reason they are so large in size is that compared to fossil fuels or particularly nuclear the energy density of wind is very small so needs large devices to capture even the small amount that these generators give out.
coastal environment disaster. bird migration. sea life. the effect on local people. the ugliness.
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.
Contrys can also just ban big scale botom trawling in some water areas because its good for the fish /environment without building a industry complex in the area ,so you can ban bottom trawling . In reality the fishing ban in the wind parks are often very invasive for the fishers :all fishing with " bottom contact" is forbidden . This leaves only drift netting as alternative. (If this is a technique that is used in the area at all). And drift netting is not used in the Baltic sea at least in coastal waters. So it's not only the big industry fishing that is impacted.
Artificial structure on muddy/sandy bottoms act as massive reefs and support an incredible amount of life. All the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico created an amazing productive reef system.
At the same time (except for the em-pollution) the pollution from the other sources when installing oil drilling platform is also there (and btw remember lastGulf of Mexico ecologic disaster)
Yet fisherman are appealing these developments. In the UK they offered contracts to bring maintenance crew out on fishing boats for some regular inspections. This offered guaranteed income and eased local opposition. Also easier to make them no catch reserves than other sea areas.
The problem is, there’s a giant ocean and the wind mill industry wants to put the wind mills in prime fishing areas. Spots where millions of pounds of fish are caught that feed people food and people get money from. It’s almost like it’s a plan to end the fishing industry by putting the wind mills only in the hot spots where commercial fishermen go to catch… it’s a kick in the nuts to thousands of family’s
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 ✌🏼
Is there a path to get floating wind cost competitive? 200USD/MWh (likely LCOE) sounds very high in an industry that is very cost competitive.
@@leonfa259 more demand will help reducing the manufacturing cost.
@@leonfa259 Yes the LCOE will drop drastically in the next 10 years. Globally there are only 216MW of floating wind turbines installed right now which is around 25 turbines, globally. So so far the projects were really small pilot projects and now the industry is planning to enter the next stage with several smaller commercial projects of 200-500MW per farm planned to be installed in the next five years and then wind farms of 1GW coming probably by the end of the decade. Scale is a very big factor for the LCOE as the production cost per unit can be reduced massively and the bigger turbines will also play a very big factor as fewer turbines/foundations will be needed. So really floating wind is just at it's starting point right now and it will be very interesting to see if it can fulfil its potential. That being said, I think the LCOE of floating will always be higher than those of bottom-fixed turbines as those are just simpler (currently around 60USD/MWh, gas & coal around 100USD/MWh), but as mentioned in the video floating opens up whole new markets.
Before watching this video, I thought that the main reason for wanting to install wind turbines at sea was so that they would not be installed on land, which has a much greater value, and it would be a shame to "waste" a large area just for that. Having this thought in mind, I questioned myself one day. "What will be the average power generated per square kilometer of a wind turbine grid, and how does that compare with the same area covered by solar panels?" That is, if the idea is to use the smallest possible area, which would be more efficient?
Not really a valid point, demand for energy is infinite. More powerful turbines don't decrease the amount of land used - just increases the energy production per land unit
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.
That was my first thought... it would be challenging enough to get parts & maintainers up 100m to the generator/gearbox/etc on land, let alone doubling that height _and_ having bigger parts _and_ having it all floating on water! I don't know what kind of sea state these wind turbines would operate in, but I can't imagine they'd want to have to detach & tow them back to shore to perform repairs if they could avoid it.
its called tax credits or gov't grants its not about longevity.
How many houses does one 18mw turbine power?
@@motheolebea9423 google says at max capacity it would power 44,000 homes for a year. Based on what I’ve seen on shore towers produce in the first few years I would say a reasonable output is maybe about 50%… might be different for offshore. So I would guess about 20,000 homes for a year.
True but the power generation offsets some of that extra service cost plus less cost to acquire wind friendly finite supply land. Luckily sealife can't appeal and governments own their waters
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 'hhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm' 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 ;-)
So huge. And 80mw...intermittent.... A modest natural gas plant needs 10 acres, and its max output ~8x that (700 MW, constant.)
@@matthewsmith8249 Hi I completely agree... it is a HUGE waste of space. Wind energy ironically takes up even more space... and not just a little more. By a factor of three or four I believe. While it is crazy difficult to find even remotely agreeing numbers on this I think it's safe to say that natural gas plants or nuclear plants take up just a _fraction_ of the space needed for solar power plants. Reading my post I realize that I come across as pro solar power. But I'm absolutely not and have never been. I think the only way forward is nuclear power... be it fission or fusion. Have a great weekend 🙂
Another benefit is that you avoid NIMBYism when you are nowhere near anyones backyard.
Scottish fishermen disagree
Another advantage is that in the ocean no one will count the number of birds that these turbines will kill ... !!!
@@theethicsofliberty4642 buildings and cats kill hundred millions more birds than wind turbines and no one is advocating to ban either..
BLM : Bird Lives Matter
@@theethicsofliberty4642 if you’re so upset about birds being killed by turbines you should also be advocating for the ban of glass skyscrapers and household cats. Both of whom kill far more birds than wind turbines.
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)
Mmmpf, batteries are not the most cost effective storage solution even if they are the most volume effective solution. When you have a country the size of Australia with such a huge amount of open, undeveloped area it makes sense to use the most cost effective solutions possible even if they take up more space.
@@mnomadvfx That is the most lazy american capitalist thinking
Thanks for sharing, Jim.
So they closed Lidell before building the replacement power? I am missing something.
@@brianjonker510 Who said there was nothing to replace it ? Are you just assuming because wind turbines was mentioned at the same time as the coal powered generator, there was going to be a gap where no power was being generated ?
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.
So might the Chinese turbines, get blown away that is!?!
It is false. No wind energy can be allowed into the4 electricity grid unless there is at lease 40% of current demand generated from fossil fuel.
@@thomasherrin6798 china bad yes yes china baaaaaaaaad 🐑
The amount of puns in this video left me winded
Well, blow me down if there aren't still wind-based puns to be made.
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!
I followed the Hywind story as it was built. What capacity factor did they manage to get out of it, wasn't it getting close to a remarkable 60%??
Lol. You people are something else.
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.
I love your very subtle sarcasm. The way you lead the reader on a journey of disbelief really got my juices flowing. It's amazing how you point out the most ironic aspects of this video with nary a hint of narcissism. Thanks for your reflective and complete comment.
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.
Not only is the swept area huge (53,000 m^2 or about 13 acres) but also do the math for circumference (816m) and from that calculate max RPM before the blade tips cause sonic booms (speed of sound in air at sea level is about 340m/sec) so to be safe, let’s say 300m/sec max blade tip speed, which means a minimum of 2.72 seconds for just a single revolution, or a maximum rotation rate of only 22 RPM. So if you ever see one of these behemoths spinning even just half as fast as the second hand of your watch, _RUN_ Edit: as lesageethan points out, the second hand on a watch turns at exactly 1 RPM, so my final statement is bonkers. The math is correct, 22RPM is correct, but it’s up to you to figure out what speed that is, the second hand won’t help much (if your watch even *has* a second hand…)
How exactly do you "mill" electrons into moving?
@@alanevery215 Charge at them at a gallop with your lance at full tilt.
@@alanevery215 by using electromagnetic millstones
@@jpe1 But a watch's second hand rotates at 1RPM? So these can rotate 22x faster than a watch hand, not 0.5x.
One thing I'd like to see touched on is the maintenance cost and expectations. What's the life cycle of a turbine sitting at sea? How long before it looks like another rusted out old oil rig? Once they're out there is there any funds set aside for reclamation of the natural environment? If a company goes bankrupt who's responsibility is it to maintain the farm or remove it and not let it become world waste?
💨🌊🌬 Great to see someone with expertise in wind energy shedding light on floating wind turbines. Your insight on the advantages of larger turbines is spot on! The scalability factor is often overlooked, as bigger turbines mean fewer installations, reduced foundation and cable requirements, and more efficient maintenance and operation. These factors contribute significantly to cost savings and overall project efficiency. Thanks for sharing your knowledge and raising awareness about the potential of offshore wind. Cheers from the windy shores! 🇳🇴✌💡
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.
Good Idea
Tidal effects are most pronounced closer to shore than in the deep ocean, and certainly closer to the sea bed than the surface in the deep ocean.
The french are starting a green hydrogen project with floating offshore wind turbines, with the hydrogen platform between the turbines, using directly the electricity to produce the hydrogen directly from the ocean water, and its only one gas pipeline to the french coast where they do the storage. If economicaly successeful, it will be the energy storage way of the future, where all vehichles since plains and trucks and ships can use. Even powerlines can be replaced by hydrogen underground pipelines, and clean up the visual environment from power lines ugly view. And we just have hydrogen powerplants inside cities, creating clean electricity as demand on real time. Just a theory yet.
If not tidal, wave power is also gaining traction. This is a good idea.
That would heavily damage aquatic life
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.
Also, following too close can cause your car to fly up into the air and flip end-over-end (at least it did for the Mercedes CLR at the 1998 LeMans race)
we add a LOT of technology to the blades to avoid this, vortex generators and serrations on the blades..can go a long way to help with waking. Problem is that the areas we are allowed to build the bigger onshore ones, is in areas where they can reclaim the land from small older turbines, so the get the crap waked out of them.
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.
Really well-made and informative video. Thank you for the hard work!
Great video Matt - thanks for making it, and I love the channel. When it comes to developing technologies, you're my favorite KZhead pundit. In fact, I'd say that this video is perhaps the most pun laden videos you've made yet, lol!
I think the deeper coastal waters are meant for where wind and water (multiple impeller?) are combined and installed on the same tower taking advantage of all of the combined infrastructures.
Cheers bloke 4 explaining stuff😊
Informative, excellent video. Keep the puns coming!
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.
Larger turbines actually start producing power at a lower wind speed than smaller ones because of their larger swept area.
@@ericreimer6627 I guess they solved the problem, whatever it was.
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.
I had no idea about much of this info, so thanks Matt!
GE has a 250m diameter 17MW, however they are upgrading the insides to get 18MW out of the same rotor diameter.
It’s definitely a big advantage for construction, assembling the turbines in port and towing them into situ, making much better use of crane/plant availability and lower-wind opportunities. However this will have profound operational cost implications, if routine maintenance and repair in situ isn’t possible, or is made much more difficult/delayed.
If you use wind power to desalinate water you could use reservoirs as massive batteries, that don't depend on rainfall.
One thing missing here is the maintenance cost and long term reliability of these off shore wind farms. It sounds to me like the initial cost is very high to the point where it just seems like there is better options. Such as well regulated nuclear fission until fusion comes along.
You blow me away with the amount of content you manage to get into one video!
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
When the wind blows just right. The rest of the time you'll be burning coal.
@@patrikb1161 Simplified calculation, obviously. though a smartly built renewable grid won't depend on "wind blowing just right", which is even more simplified
Ive just completed a university report on a theoretical windfarm on Irelands west coast in 50m water depths. We went with tripod jacket foundations and SG10.0-193DD turbines due to concerns on the reliability and lack of comparative research in the field of floating wind. Seeing China do 18MW floating is incredible and seems like a leap in innovation for sure!
What would the rated capacity be of the theoretical wind farm?
@@gabrieldsouza6541 If the wind maintained 10m/s for 1/3 of each day it would produce 730,000 MWh from 25 10MW turbines. This would be 2.3% of Ireland's 2019 energy demand. Purely theoretical of course but an interesting research topic
@@DannyRice01 Hi, I always wondered when looking at the current electricity load, power sources and wind capacity of Ireland how come you are not much further with land installations yet. Tons of gas import and electricity import from the UK could be saved... thoughs?
@@Walterwaltraud Nimbyism, conservation area concerns and an abysmal grid system that needs a major overhaul means Ireland is behind on their wind installations. But now the money is there and goals have been set so it will happen in time!
@@DannyRice01 Hey, thanks a lot for the update! Was there anything that accelerate change? The Ukraine war? Price hikes?
Good information Chris, thanks!
Each week I inevitably find myself wondering: How much time does your team spend coming up with puns? Do you have a minimum pun count for and given video?
Wind Turbines are fantastic bits of kit but it must be part of a diverse generation, grid and storage system. The future is complex and anyone that thinks just one type of generation is the answer really needs to do more home work
it's especially well suited to California considering their powerful NIMBY groups tend to block all kinds of new construction near them
Excellent comment. Too many people want a simple one-size-fits-all solution. Diversity should the basic approach to the world's energy future.
I mean it's funny how this comment always comes up with clean energy but never oil. I don't disagree with you but if you weren't saying the same thing about gas and oil then it would be a tad hypocritical wouldn't it.
I'm not sure why some people are so against them being built because they supposedly ruin the view. But when they are 10 miles offshore they are so small to the eye. I've always looked at them as people see windmills, just nice decorations on the sea.
To be honest even on land they don't bother me at all, i find them pretty futuristic and elegant looking and it's a nice thought that because of them there isn't some forest being chopped or mine being opened to provide energy.
Luckily (and somewhat sadly) civilians have basically no say whatsoever in what happens with these large companies. It’s all about the bottom dollar, not about what is an eye sore to a passerby
The quality of your videos is amazing. Thanks!
Great wrap up, thanks
Very nice one! I was really interested in the turbines and always watch in awe how those actually get installed. Go wind!
Years ago I watched a TV show on Big Construction about large concrete hexagons that were inverted and floated on the ocean as possible floating cities of the future. If you coupled that idea with the floating, huge wind turbines, then you have a nearby grid to utilize your energy production. If not residential, then these floating properties could make ideal production facilities for marine construction or transfer of materials from larger to smaller vessels.
Floating a city makes no sense when any amount of ground exists.
@@FuncleChuck true, but if there are no islands where you want a transfer port, or no deepwater ports on the coast to accommodate the larger ships, then this might be a feasible option.
9:40 So the whole potential of offshore wind energy is just enough to power 650 million homes, had expected much more potential
Amazing video keep them coming thank you so much for putting so much time and effort into them
Terrific and very informative video, understandable for everyone. Topic here in Europe where we have many windfarms is defending those farms agains sabotage of the powerlines and or wind turbines and destruction. That would bring us too fat as this video gives an insight of how things work. Thank you Matt !!
Even my two year old started building wind turbines after watching this. What an inspiration.
I’m about to finish technical school in a month to be a wind turbine technician. I will start out working on onshore turbines in my home state of Kansas but I hope someday I get a chance to work on one of these behemoths. The onshore turbines are already awe inspiring pieces of engineering I can’t imagine seeing one of these giants in person.
You may want to study floating off shore oil rig's while your working in Kansas or wherever. Your company most likely will help or pay for some night classes. This tech as he mentioned is just converting the oil rig tech to wind turbines. Good luck!
@@qjimq I’ll definitely be asking whatever company I end up with about further education options!
@@huebeyduebey3493 It sounds like a real exciting industry. To be young again, ha ha
@@qjimq thank you for the kind words and advice! Not gonna lie when I saw the American flag profile and the first sentence was about how I should be studying oil rigs I though “oh great another one of these boomers” but I kept reading and was pleasantly surprised.
@@huebeyduebey3493 Well that shows that you have an open mind and don't assume you know everything which is perfect in an emerging field which will have to compete w/ huge established/entrenched near monopolies. I'm an almost retired engineer and worked on some of GE's first land turbines in New England, when each town that invested went bankrupt. Eventually, the turbines became more efficient and competed successfully. I stayed in MFG but for different products that were struggling to compete, and what I learned is to always assume I am wrong. If I'm right in the end great, but I start from assuming I am wrong and work from there. Fight my fight, but know in the end somebody will find a better way to do it and that kept me humble and open minded and successful in an ever changing environment. I don't know if that helps you, but I'm glad you replied and your kind words. I think it shows you're a bigger person than most and that often means admitting you can be wrong and build off that. Learn and move on w/ the wisdom. I certainly still practice it today and we're working on employing 30k people at Subic Bay Philippines where people off the street amaze me w/ something new every day. Don't ignore them or judge them because you might meet a lot in the oil industry. Take what you can use and filter out the BS as best you can. Sorry for the long reply but I'm so happy that you replied w/ my off color emoji. LOL, the banana's have a bit of a different meaning over here where they export them. Thanks again for the conversation.
I work for on Offshore wind developer, we plan these things so far in the future that we explore some crazy options that don't even exist yet. Like 25MW Turbines with diameters of 300m+
That is near future. Medium future is like 30 km wind turbines on Venus. Petawatts. Far in the future we get astrophysical jets, Herbing-Harrow objects, quasar drives etc. Though obviously the words "near" and "far" are highly subjective.
Nice timing btw! I’m currently attending Enercon in Copenhagen, so your video is very on brand (and I’ll be sending it to some of my customers). Good job 👍🏼
I've just finished an internship at Enercon as a maintenance engineer, its a great company!
One thing I'd like to see is the usable life of these wind turbines. I've seen dozens of turbines in the California desert that are less than 15 years old, now broken and rusting. What happens when a wind turbine is no longer usable? Who decommissions it and what does that cost?
That's because they don't take good care of them. Tvindkraft (google it pls) runs a 2 MW "layman" overengineered one since 1975 at 1 MW, that's 48 years...
Average life is about 25 years on land. If I had to guess, the offshore life would be shorter, due to a few factors such as being a newer technology. Maintenance costs go up and up as the tower ages. This is factored into electricity prices and planning of the wind farms.
Wow, I was blown away by the puns in this video. Nice work Matt!
Glad you enjoyed it.
Such a great video, keep it up!
By far my biggest concern is finding a way to refurbish the blades instead of throwing them away every time they wear out.
When the blade is worn out it is maybe possible to recycle the materials in the future. But the blade as is is probably worn out mechanically, in one or several components . The scale up of the components probably makes if age faster also. There are data that support the theory that this very large turbines last shorter time than the smaller ones.
Carbon fiber is hard to recycle. These turbines last for 25 years, sometimes longer. So it’s not like they are just throwing them out Willy nilly when they start to get some dirt on them.
Great video! Thank you for correctly using SI (metric) units in these engineering videos.
Wind farms on or off shore are a scam. Now that on shore wind farms have failed the vultures move to off shore because they have never bee tested. This presenter cannot even feed himself.
The mix of imperial and metric units is a little distracting though. Even as an American, I'd rather hear all metric than a jumble of two systems. I would bet that everyone watching this channel is into science and technology and is familiar with meters.
Where I am (NE Scotland) = Moray East Offshore Windfarm (opened Dec 2018) = 100 x 9.5 MW turbines. Moray West Offshore Windfarm (due to open 2025) = 60 wind turbines each with a generating capacity of 14.7 megawatts (MW). That's progress for you - and it highlights a potential opportunity in 'repowering' older (onshore and offshore) windfarms.
Next generation will be bigger and floating. They called the Greens crazy for wanting this stuff.
How many houses in total can it power?
@@JayForsure How long is a piece of string? Bascially you have 950mw v 882mw (7% less) installed capacity with 40% fewer turbines.
The french are starting a green hydrogen project with floating offshore wind turbines, with the hydrogen platform between the turbines, using directly the electricity to produce the hydrogen directly from the ocean water, and its only one gas pipeline to the french coast where they do the storage. If economicaly successeful, it will be the energy storage way of the future, where all vehichles since plains and trucks and ships can use. Even powerlines can be replaced by hydrogen underground pipelines, and clean up the visual environment from power lines ugly view. And we just have hydrogen powerplants inside cities, creating clean electricity as demand on real time. Just a theory yet.
@@ricardoxavier827 In the UK we have a company which chills normal air to a liquid and can store it for weeks. No high pressure storage needed or explosive gas. When you need energy you allow the air to warm up and feed it through a turbine. The solutions are coming!
Very informative! And very hopeful!
Thanks Matt for another thought provoking presentation.
I’m really skeptical about the economic viability of these floating wind turbines. I do like the fact that you need fewer of them compared to land-based turbines or fixed offshore turbines. But the cost of maintenance must be astronomical.
@@rogerstarkey5390 thanks 4 ledden me no
Roger doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Maintenance on land is huge, when you go offshore, you need divers, underwater welders, specialty technicians, boats, ect. The cost of maintenance is astronomical and this the driving factor in making them as big as possible, so that there are fewer to repair. As they start to age (10 or 15 years old) the maintenance costs only go up. (I work in the industry)
I climb the land based ones for a living and have for 10 years now. My company is the largest in wind in the US and we’re planning to triple our wind production by 2027. The biggest downfall to offshore wind is the cost. With US having so much land recourses, it’s hard to justify spending the extra on offshore. Seeing these huge new towers makes my knees hurt thinking about forgetting a tool lol hopefully they all have man lifts lol
Well, these offshore turbines will be serviced by helicopters, so your knees will be fine.
Other turbine manufacturers are not as cheap as the american one, they all install lifts in each turbined. And all offshore turbines have lifts.
I think I work for the same company, if I had to guess. Without going into too much detail, I can tell you right now that although they want to triple by 2030 or whatever, they absolutely will not be able to. Many issues with company scaling, hiring, expanding, organizing. They are shooting for the stars in hopes to land among the clouds.
@@niconico3907 You do realize it is all about $$$ customer is willing to pay upfront and ALL turbines from ALL companies can be purchased with a manlift... They do not come standard here genius...
@@w8stral in other countries, most manufacturer don't sell turbines without lifts, because the manufacturer knows they will do the service of these turbines at least for the warranty time.
Well presented. I hope this gets shared in environmental science classes. The biggest factors favoring offshore wind are 1) laminar flow, so the air itself moves smoothly round the blades. This leads to less wear and tear, quieter operation and smoother transition from low to high wind speeds. True there are still gusts, but overall less severe. 2) less people and animals to annoy 3) ability to easily lay out wind-farms in economic linear grids without having to deal with roads, bridges, houses etc 4) local cabling kept cool due to immersion in water so less energy loss before high voltage transformer . Cabling length is be a major factor in wind turbine cost and placement especially in remote areas. I have run small scale wind power for 40 years and its brilliant if well installed.
For a usefull reference, the Average Nuclear power plant produces around 1 Gw. The 18GW increase in 2021 is like 18 new Nuclear power plants getting built, except Nuclear power plants require decades of planning and permits. I love Nuclear but at this point its going to get leapfrogged by Wind.
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.
Wow, sounds great! So when can I expect my energy bills to start trending downward?
I'd assume that the OPEX is considerably high, also, due to instability issues and the environment's saltiness. What's the current EROI of off-shore wind farms?
@@Adrian-zw6sc AFTER mankind has sequestered all the CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere. So after your lifetime.
well history shows that over the last century no primary energy source has reduced because of the introduction of an other one. it has only been added to the energy production and consumptions. the only one that reduced in total amount was the wood usage in mid 1800s. Also, there is a huge amount of Fossil that are used for now, and replacing that is a huge effort. Quickly is not the word I would be using at the moment.
@@benjaminlamey3591 Misleading: population growth and the expansion of industrialization has exploded energy production and consumption. Until 1870 wood contributed more than coal and hydro in absolute terms and as a percentage of total. Coal dominated from then until 1940, it has grown from 12 to 22 quadrillion BTUs around 2010 when it began dropping in absolute terms and as a percentage of total use. Natural gas paralleled Coal but continues to grow in absolute terms and as a percentage, surpassing Coal. During the period petroleum growth outstripped Coal and Gas in absolute terms and as a percentage of use. New sources have ABSOLUTELY replaced previous sources as a percentage of growing capacity resulting from population growth and industrialization. U.S. population 1923 was 112M, now it is 334M. Population and industrialization growth caused a growth in energy consumption by a factor of SIX globally.
I'm guessing that anywhere with these turbines becomes a Marine reserve and I know from visiting some in New Zealand how positive those are for Marine life. So it seems likely that any negative effect from the EMF noise would be countered by reduced commercial and recreational fishing.
Marine reserve without birds and why stop recreational fishing? There effectively is none compared to commercial. Everywhere Wind turbines are built they become bird deserts. Out to sea there aren't many birds, just keep them OUT of estuaries and other swamp lands where birds nesting grounds are. Far Far away. Shore turbines are STUPID ecologically speaking. At least out on the plains there are few birds.
All fishing with any methods that involve any bottom contact is usually forbidden, often the local smaller coastal fishers Are the ones that get there waters "converted to no go zones", sometimes they cant keep fishing at all. the bigger boats can fish longer out at sea with ease. So yes building far far out to sea is better. In combination with banning large scale industrial bottom trawling in coastal waters. To protect the ecology and local Fischery.
I live in Scotland and own 2 farms. One of them is off grid with battery storage. We don't get a lot of sun but do have a lot of wind. From one window I can see 26 wind turbines that have been making electricity for many years.
I considered myself well versed in such topics but your video has blown away my pessimism about wind energy. Watched you for the first time and subd.
It's amazing how much renewable energy sources have improved in the last 30 years. 🙋🏻♂️
The french are starting a green hydrogen project with floating offshore wind turbines, with the hydrogen platform between the turbines, using directly the electricity to produce the hydrogen directly from the ocean water, and its only one gas pipeline to the french coast where they do the storage. If economicaly successeful, it will be the energy storage way of the future, where all vehichles since plains and trucks and ships can use. Even powerlines can be replaced by hydrogen underground pipelines, and clean up the visual environment from power lines ugly view. And we just have hydrogen powerplants inside cities, creating clean electricity as demand on real time. Just a theory yet.
Wind has increased much faster in output per turbine than solar has per panel. Which is a big part of why it is so much less expensive per kwh. Even at the most ideal efficiency solar will never be as cost efficient as solar sadly.
Ugh, Matt the puns 😂 Fantastic video. I know wind power has drawbacks but it produces so much energy with such a small footprint compared to solar. I think we just need to find the right balance between solar, wind and other clean sources. Very inspired. Thank you!
So. Many. Puns. 😅
Love the puns, very mischievous!
Those are some dangerously good captions. Thanks!
Matt, I really enjoyed this video and your very thorough input on the potential for wind turbines being scaled up dramatically. I'm wondering, really, how long it will be before fusion reactors become a reality. Once fusion reactors are perfected and scaled up, there may not be so much of a demand for wind turbines. But, we're not there yet, so having these wind turbines, whether fixed or floating, is something we need now.
Does anybody else love all of the puns Matt sprinkles throughout his videos?
Really neat I had no idea that this expansion in size is going on. I saw the first big wind farms in California thirty years ago. Five years ago I viewed the extreme growth of this technology in Texas and mass production appears not to be a problem.
It's even bigger than that. Plans for contra rotating turbines are spiralling up to the range of 40MW each for the future from some companies. The implications of being able to get a gigawatt from just 25 turbines are huge, even if the turbines themselves are pretty huge too 😂 That being said we desperately need utlity scale storage solutions to match all this extra power generated from renewables, otherwise a great deal of it will simply go to waste.
Wind companies are expanding as fast as humanly possible. Right now the major constraints are internal: takes a long time to hire, hard to organize the expansion, problems arise with new technologies and new programs that control the towers, tech support, ect. The demand is through the roof, the money is there, it’s all internal issues.
"wind shadow" is also called "lee". but i think that applies more to large masses of land. If that word doesnt make sense to you, have you ever heard of "the leeward side" of an island? its the side sheltered from the wind. on the flipside you have the wayward side, which faces the wind. Sailors might say they are looking for shelter in the lees, or perhaps say they are caught in the lees if they are trying to get a move on.
I wold like to see an updated video on the recycling/disposal of the blades
Good suggestion.
One thing you didn't talk about was the differences in wind speed at the top of the sweep of the wind turbine blade versus the bottom. This may require a change of the pitch angle as the blade rotates for maximum efficiency. Do these large wind turbine do this? Or do they function like typical size wind turbine and only adjust pitch angle to maintain the correct output frequency?
Good point....the wind difference between the top and the bottom of a turbine can be a real issue when warm air blows over cold water. In these conditions you can get a powerful low level jet at the 100 - 500 meter range but not so much wind down at the water surface. This happens more frequently near land, and especially in the spring and summer.
There are also other reasons to pitch the blade when they are up or down. The rotor turn around a shaft that is not horizontal, its tilted a few degrees up to give more space between the tower and the blade which is in the low position. This tilt means the blade going up has an angle of attack that is different than the angle of the blade going down. The angle of attack changing all the time means the mechanical stress on the blades also changes all the time which is worse for the blades life than a constant stress. The wind is also slower near the tower.
@@niconico3907 I guess "teetering" (ala chopper) is out of the question for the same reason - tower-strike.
I think the blade angels are the same at all blades , you cant rotate the blade hub fast enough to compensate for passing the tower wind speed bottom and top , you would have to a very short life span on the central hub mechanics if it was moving all time. The blades often rotate in case of the turbine trying to maintain the rpm envelope, if the rotating is accelerated the gear box first try to change generator axle output generating more power (breaking), and if the rpm on the turbine is still raising the blades pitch is changed . There is also a mechanic break in the nasell turbine house, to regulate rpm on blades. The blade rotation from high pitch to no neutral takes some Time maybe 5-10 seconds. On helicopters the blade hub is constantly shecked, because of the high mechanical load and constantly pitching blades.
The blade angle actually changes multiple times per second! Very small adjustments so that there is less resistance to the main rotor. This force you are talking about is already taken into account!
Storage, reliability and construction costs per unit of power capacity are three major factors that will keep wind from competing with fossil fuels for a very long time.
Really interesting video - subscribed!
Glad to hear you touch on environmental impacts, but I think there might be another angle to consider. The biggest impact to ocean eco systems is large scale fishing, which probably wouldn't be possible in a wind farm, so although there would certainly be some initial disturbance, these areas could serve as safe havens for life over the longer term.
Why do you think there would be no fishing in an offshore wind farm?
@@paulogden7417 do you want to be on a fishing boat that just snagged an electrical cable carrying 420,000 volts? Perhaps you are thinking of a few guys in their cigarette boat, knocking back beers while their fishing lines dangle a few feet into the water, or maybe a few guys with a small seine net? Commercial fishing involves massive gill nets that are 6 to 10 miles long, or long lines that are typically 20 to 40 miles long. Not the sort of thing that can be safely used around wind turbines with anchor cables and power cables enmeshing the area. Aquaculture might be possible within an offshore wind farm, but I don’t see how that could be economically preferable over onshore locations.
Exactly, what Paul said.
@@andynewsom Can't trawl in a field of cables and anchors.
@@devins7457 Meant to agree with John Early, not Paul! heheh.
Another amazing video, well done Matt!
Appreciate it.
I personally saw one of these turbines and housings at Port of Odense last year. Insanely big..
I live in Eureka, California, and the floating wind industry is headed this way soon. A production facility is planned in the Eureka harbor, which is well suited due to deep water and absence of bridges that would inhibit tall structures. My understanding is that turbines will be manufactured here for much of the west coast of the US, which is certainly all good news. People who live in Eureka have been through multiple boom/bust cycles related to fishing and timber and so are obviously a bit wary of the impact of this new industry in the area. Having lived for many years in Silicon Valley, I'm excited to have this opportunity to watch this burgeoning industry bring a technological solution to an important need and my hope is that the net impact is to massively lower the co2 output of the energy production as a result of these innovations.
This was one of your most well done, informative, and impressive videos. Great presentation on the pros, cons, and challenges. My one takeaway, and most fascinating , was that if you take the cost factor out of the equation there is currently a truly sustainable solution to the earths energy needs available right now. And it's not some hi-tech engineering marvel of technology that is years from proving feasible.
One of the biggest challenges is keeping these turbines serviced and looked after.
Absolutely! I would argue it’s the #1 factor in planning these farms.
There is a lot research going on how to create digital twins of the wind turbines to service them exactly when needed.
@@Tri-Technology I currently work in that industry, and its nowhere near currently being as good as for instance hte telecom towers are. In saying that the blade inspections are getting more and more advanced and quick. Unfortunately its very weather dependant.
Fun fact, china suffer from regular typhoon attack. Those turbines are designed to harvest energy from it. They can withstand 180kmph wind. However these massive power spikes cause problem to power grid. They have to waste that energy. The average power is just 0.5% - 2% of the peak it can generate!!! If we have good energy storage strategy, 1 typhoon day would be able to surpass 100 normal day!!! So there is a long way to go in wind power
Great video Matt. I want more giant wind turbines!!!!
Hi Matt, great video as always. I just wanted to share a piece of new technology with you. A company called Sharrow make a new boat propeller that increases efficiency by ~30%, lowering noise at speed by like 50%. They have removed the blade tips entirely with their unique design.
He made a video on that recently.
toroidal propellers are only good for high RPM situations. These giant wind turbines spin extremely slowly (relatively speaking). Toroidal shaped propellers would only be prohibitively more expensive and add little to no positive effects.
It's so big I actually want one on my roof just to spite my annoying neighbor.
Lol it would crush your house from the weight. Even smaller turbines need big concrete foundations. Floating turbines have the benefit of the water reducing the problem, then you just need counter weight to stop it from tipping over.
@@mnomadvfx Yeah you're probably right
18Mw 😮 When the 8Mw came out I thought it could never get bigger. Get a disused oil rig and maybe we could be heading for a 100Mw turbine. 😊
Loved this! 🤓👍
Thx much for this. Enormous potential. Imagine wind turbines also being used as functional art or by painting them in different colors to mimic a field of flowers. Probably not cost effective but in some areas it might mitigate - to some degree - nimby objections. Christo became famous for a lot more fantastical and impractical art projects. Might be worth a try once to see what the reaction would be, and might even give folks a grin in addition to carbon-free energy.
Not a good idea, because birds will see the color green and once they hit the wind turbines they are dead. Birds see green as a sign of a tree and they usually try and hop onto whatever object.
@@maxpro751 this seems like you just made it up.
@@pissoffeachother Well I kinda did. Some birds may mistake the rotating blades of wind turbines for trees or other structures and collide with them, this is not due to their perception of the color green. Many bird species are not able to perceive the color green, as their vision is limited to certain wavelengths but what my point I am trying to get across is birds DO sometimes mistake these objects as structures and therefore land on them.
Enercon already does this by adding a green gradient to the base of their towers
How many homes these turbines can power is a distraction from the industrial use of electricity. How do they stack up against electric car demands, electric trains, steel production, and general manufacturing demands?
Hahaha! I would love to count all the wind puns, but I couldn't count that high 😂
Very well done!
Compare a 3gw nuke (Hinkley Point C) v a 3gw offshore windfarm (Dogger Bank). Compare the costs, the energy generation, the build time, the materials, the waste disposal and so on. The windfarm wins hands down. No real windfarm storage options though - yet. But they are coming.
The windfarm wins, but only when the wind is actually blowing. Without scaled storage to take the slack that the grid doesn't need a lot of that will simply go to waste. This is the greatest problem facing renewables that those dinky Tesla Power Banks just aren't going to come close to solving economically.
While I agree with you, for offshore wind you will need a lot more to power to reach the energy output of a 3 GW nuke plant, probably about 12 GW Plus storage.
@@FreeOfFantasy For sure. But you could build 2 Doggers plus an energy storage solution for the price of a Hinckly - and in a fraction of the time.
The problem is that we can’t store the wind energy effectively for long periods of time and when the wind isn’t blowing there isn’t much that can be done in terms of energy generation. Whilst I do agree with the points you have presented, it’s better to think of nuclear and renewables as complimentary sources of energy rather than opposing. Despite the large investment required, we need nuclear energy to keep the lights on when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing.
@@deekayunited3445 Huge variation in UK generation from wind this month. right now on gridwatch, wind is at 1.35GW. We have had a poor April for wind this year. You would need both those doggers and storage to match the output a new Hinckly would have produced. To be fair though, our nuclear output hasn't been that great with an unplanned shutdown of one plant and Sizewell's still offline for refuelling and not due back until early May, a good two weeks later than planned.
Or replace hundreds of turbines with one nuclear plant.
they Don't want that because these channels try to push the climate change bs to everyone
I'm curios about the resilience of these turbines in case of powerfull storms, even hurricane level ones. Best case scenario I would see, is if they enter a shutdown mode to protect themselvs in which case they would produce nothing for the duration of the storm. Other relevant questions would be lifespan and maintenance costs, especially for the floating ones.
There is storm stow, they face the wind, spin freely, and angle the blades to catch the least amount of wind, but wind direction can change rapidly. For this reason, it’s likely that they avoid areas prone to hurricanes completely. And yes, maintenance is a HUGE cost factor. When turbines start to age (10 or 15 years only) the maintenance costs go up and up and up
Thank you for your very informative and entertaining video. I live on an island called Malta and this could really work well for us.
whats the service life of these systems? whats the actual carbon footprint, how much toxic was is generated during production and decommission. how much money does it generate vs cost and maintenance.
The motor would need some maintenance The steel structure.. well 100 - 300 years
Enormous seaborne structures have a Titanic amount of problems to overcome but a balance of “all of the above” to renewable energy is needed as soon as possible.
I live 15 minutes from Østerild test center, and I love driving by to watch the worlds biggest windmill
Excellent video. I think with a combo of lots of offshore (floating) wind, geothermal and gravity (not pumped) hydro we can get a pretty good cloudy day/nightime renewable base load energy grid without needing a lot of storage, and we could use PV as a daytime peaking mechanism, with community based batteries for evening peak domestic power. At least on the back of an envelope, this is all doable economically, but will need energy consuming industries to be rewarded for load shifting/demand response and penalised for not playing well in a renewable grid - industry (historically great innovators in a crisis) will find much better responses to the problem of demand/storage when it hits their balance sheet than any government ever will with grid scale storage. Oh, oil and gas industries need to be be much more highly taxed and regulated so their precious commodity is used for high value/return petrochemical manufacturing rather than the stupidity of boiling water.
Or then we could just build nuclear plants for guaranteed reliability and lower lifetime costs. Oil refinement always produces different weighted distillates. You can change the ratio only to certain degree but you will always have a portion of light distillates and heavy distillates. If there would be a more value adding use for gasoline and diesel than to use it for heating and moving things, it would certainly been happening for a long time.
@@k0zzu21 The massive up front costs mean Nuclear is probably a great option for countries with high population density, large wealth and stable government, but for the rest of us it is a VERY high barrier to entry, and pacific island nations, for example, could really win from floating wind. Probably keep the heavy distillate fraction for container shipping can work, especially as those big boats have room for small scale carbon scrubbing. gasoline/petroleum spirits are a vexed issue. Using them for transport is probably going to be cheaper than EVs, right up until the point that our planet is totally cooked. This is why we need policy in place to ban burning the light fractions of crude and encourage other non combustion uses like polymer synthesis as it is not just an economic argument.
I still don't understand why the toothpick shaped blades are used instead of something wider to catch more wind. Also, if we have so many of these put into place, then why are we all still paying such high costs for electricity produced from nuclear plants? Whose using these turbines and for what? Maybe I just don't understand. Anyway, thank you for your videos, Matt. I try to keep learning. (In spite of getting old! 😊)
Simply put, the turbine blades in operation move much faster than the air that pushes them, so they need to be thin and aerodynamic to cut through the air as cleanly as possible while extracting the most amount of torque from the wind. (think of a reverse helicopter) If it were any thicker the turbine would act like a sail and be pushed over, while requiring much more material to make due to the added weight and the size of the blades, while being more inefficient due to air drag. Giant wind turbines and their thin blades are a cost optimisation. Hope that helps.
Who is using the electricity produced by these? Most areas have at least some wind power in the mix these days, so most of us use at least a little bit of electricity generated by wind, and some use a lot. Still, it will be a while before we have enough wind power installed to provide all the electricity we need. The numbers given in this video show that it would be possible to get pretty much all our electricity from wind power, but also that it would be pretty expensive to build the infrastructure required for that. So it will be a while before we can get rid of dirtier methods of generation, and there will probably eventually be a wide variety of methods of generation used. Wind, solar, nuclear, hydro etc.
@@Xeloboyo I was thinking wider, therefore shorter, but never mind that! I see why, now! This helps! Thank you, Xelo.
@@johnathangeorge1109 It's funny to think I'm still using candles and flashlights when the electricity goes out. But I'm seriously looking into a home solar and wind turbine system combination. And I think that's pretty expensive, so I understand what you're saying about the 'expensive infrastructure'. Thank you for your help, Jonathan!
Simple. More sail area means more wind caught, but it also means more weight meaning more wind needed to actually turn the turbine blades in the first place. There's a delicate balance to be addressed there.
Very interesting video like we know from you, thanks for that. I am a big fan of renewables for a long time and for the most time of that I was 50 : 50 on wind vs PV but not too long ago I have watched a video where the costs where compared and this changed my view very much in favor of PV. I think it was a podcast from the Tesla community with a relatively unknown guest. Sadly I couldn’t find it, maybe I watch too many of these lately. 😂 but it was maybe 3-6 months ago. What do you know and say about that? Installing is much more expensive, they need very expensive maintenance, especially offshore. Moving parts need more maintenance and until now, most blades are composite materials that are not really recyclable. I know, the development of recyclable one is going and even full wood ones are build but for much smaller turbines. I would love to see a video of that from you. Like I know you, you could research the heck out of that and give a very good answer 😅 Thanks again for your greatly done videos, I appreciate them very much. Have a nice day.
Id like to see the comparison of early offshore drilling installation/ mantaince cost vs floating turbines. Currently it makes economic sense to continue drilling, so the price, vs emerging technology cost had to have balanced out. And where wind has the cable costs, the oil industry has the cost of increased labor on rigs, sampling costs to find oil, as well as further refinement costs once bringing energy back to land, over all i see it as a better long term economic move. Even outside the whole green energy conversation.
"To put things in perspective, here's the size of the Eiffel tower" Well, i've never been to the Eiffel tower. I guess the size is indeed, incomprehensible.