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The United Kingdom has some of the richest wind resources in the world. For years this potential lay untapped, but efforts in the UK are at last taking off.
An important policy shift came a couple weeks ago government officials at the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the independent regulatory agency Ofgem moved towards confirming plans to open up the construction of new offshore grids and connects to engineering firms. The new grid construction will help connect offshore wind installations to the mainland grid.
The regulatory agency Ofgem lauds the decision, saying that its in the nation's best interests to let companies compete to build these new portions of the grid. Currently connections to offshore turbines are mostly built and managed by the government’s National Grid effort. By licensing the construction and management of these connections to independent firms, Ofgen says the cost of construction and operations will drop dramatically.
An Ofgem spokesman states, “Clearly, there are companies around the world that can do this work and we're expecting a great deal of interest because it's a long-term low risk investment for them.”
Companies will consult with Ofgem and the government, starting May 6, and licenses will start being handed out a month later. The demand for grid development licenses is expected to be intense, given the furious nature of the UK Crown Estate’s (yes, the land is owned by the Queen) auction of new installation licensing last month, which saw bids for up to 25 GW of total capacity, covering all 9 of the UK’s offshore zones.
In total 40 zone bids were received from 18 companies or green power alliances. Among the top bidders were Germany utility E.ON, Denmark's Dong Energy, Norway's StatoilHydro, Spain's Iberdrola Renovables, Germany's RWE and the UK's Scottish and Southern Energy.
The new installations, and upcoming licensing of grid work to support them, should help the UK achieve its power goals of having 25 GW of wind power active by 2020. The UK is also looking to follow EU targets, which call for 15 percent of its energy and 30 to 40 percent of its power come from alternative sources. And the new grid policies couldn’t have come at a better time – New Energy Finance reported last year that 11 GW of the UK’s offshore installations are stuck in planning due to lack of grid support.
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written by TheZov, April 11, 2009
It is a well known fact that wind energy is several times more cost effective and implementable at this time than solar energy is. Furthermore, the sustainability impact of extracting energy from wind, if ANY (which, by the way, you failed to articulate), is considerably less harmful to fringe systems and the environment as a whole than any traditional energy infrastructure; therefore making dogmatic proclamations such as "Harvesting wind power is dangerous" akin to saying that one should not move out of the way of a speeding freight train (in this case, climate change) for fear of twisting one's ankle.
If persuading the world to go solar is your goal, then perhaps you would be kind enough to educate us on the "vastly superior" solar integration, rather than haphazardly attempting to debunk real, sound, progressive steps taken by those leading the green revolution.
What efforts, specifically, are YOU making to help shift the grid towards alternative energy sources?
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written by Peter, April 12, 2009
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written by No_Wind, April 12, 2009
My point was that wind energy is no panacea. It is ONLY a beginning and SHOULD NOT be thought of as a long-term solution - for those reasons I listed.
I do not mind wind farms for small energy magnitudes. Just as I have no problem with a person creating a campfire to keep warm -- but I certainly wouldn't encourage the human race to burn down all of the forests.
Solar has one long-term benefit - it has zero impact on the environment. Bear in mind, I consider only the impact of harvesting the energy - making the devices as they stand today is still a huge negative. With luck, we'll find a means to minimize the impact of manufacture, also.
Why zero impact? Solar energy in all forms is eventually converted to heat when it strikes the earth or used by plants. When we harvest it for human use, we convert the energy to different forms, but eventually it ends up as heat also. And by the principle of Conservation of Energy, it is not possible to have created more heat than what we absorbed. Zero impact.
Wind is created by heat from the sun also; however, when we remove some of that energy, we do it not from the original energy stream but from another stream already in use by the climate, plants, and animals. We *will* impact the world more by using wind than by using solar. Wind is not a viable long-term solution and *is* dangerous to be thought of in that manner.
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written by heat_v_light, April 13, 2009
1) How do you propose to minimise the effect of manufacturing solar cells? Perhaps Harry Potter will be recruited to the effort?
2) Presumably any remotely efficient solar cell is going to be "black", i.e. reflect virtually no light. Covering large areas of desert or whatever land surface, with these things, is going to increase the amount of energy the Earth absorbs from the sun.
Neither of these are show-stoppers for solar power, but to portray as impact free is, well, ludicrous.
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written by Bob Wallace, April 13, 2009
Solar might become less expensive per watt than wind, but the wind blows at night when the sun isn't shining. For us to abandon wind the cost of solar *plus* storage would have to be less than the cost of wind generation.
All forms of energy harvesting will have some impact and change things from the way they were. But any change produced by either wind or solar is likely to be much, much less than what we are doing by digging up sequestered carbon and burning it.
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Wind energy moves heat (affecting our climate), carries seeds and pollen (affecting our food), and permits migration (affecting the world's animals). It may have other impacts we don't recognize.
Harvesting wind power is dangerous! What happens when we start removing gigawatts of energy from the wind? It will not have a negligible impact. If we learn nothing from the last one hundred years, we should learn that there is nothing we do that won't impact this planet. And, generally, doing LOTS of something means having LOTS Of impact.
Solar energy is the only truly safe renewable energy.