The Future of Energy – Episode 2: Offshore Wind Power

***Music***
First Light by Dotlights – Copyright Chillhop Music – https://chll.to/f65afbc5
Swimming by Sleepy Fish – Copyright Chillhop Music – https://chll.to/d983758d

*****************************************************************************

The global annual potential of onshore and offshore wind power is around 840,000 TWh, that’s almost 40 times that world’s annual power consumption!

The Global Wind Power capacity has more than doubled since 2012 from around 280 GW to over 650 GW today.

650 GW power capacity generates enough electricity to power the US and India combined.

Along with the growth in capacity, the wind turbines themselves have grown over the years.

The diameter of commercial turbine rotors was around 17m in the 1980s and generated around .07 MW.

Today, the average rotor is over 116m and generates over 2.4 MW.

The giant turbines used today are made possible by the advancement of material science, allowing the giant blades and shafts to withstand a tremendous amount of stress.

These larger turbines have led to a substantial drop in cost over the past 40 years.

The cost of wind power was 38 cents per kWh in 1980: today, it’s less than two cents!

Alright, so how do these incredible devices work?

Wind turbine are like plane propellers but in reverse.

Instead of an engine powering propellers to generate a wind force, the wind blows through the rotors and powers the engine.

This boils down to the Bernoulli Principal.

The shape of the blade causes air to take a longer path around one side compared to the other.

And this creates a difference in air pressure causing the blade to pull toward the low-pressure side, which spins the rotor.

Inside the turbine housing lies coils of wire that spin inside a magnetic field generating an electric current.

The downside to wind power is that only certain parts of the world have consistent wind at the ideal speed, which is between 21 and 26 km/h.

This map highlights the area that contains ideal wind speeds.

The areas in yellow, orange, and red are great places of wind turbines.

However, the map does not cover the shorelines, where the winds are much more constant than on land.

Offshore wind power is the fastest-growing sector in wind power lead by the UK and Germany.

The UK has three of the largest offshore wind farms in the world, the largest at the moment being the Hornsea Farm.

Hornsea has a massive 1.2GW capacity and is located 120 kilometers off England’s Yorkshire coast and will produce enough energy to power 1 million homes.

The farm has 174 turbines, each standing 100 meters tall.

Each Turbine can power the average home for an entire day with just a single rotation.

And if you think that’s impressive, General Electric has developed a wind turbine that makes the ones on the Hornsea farm look like children.

Enter the Haliade-X wind turbine.

The Haliade-X is gargantuan, standing 260 meters tall, equipped with 107 long blades.

With a 12MW capacity, a single Haliade turbine can power 16,000 homes.

GE recently constructed a prototype Haliade in the Netherlands; this is a time-lapse of the construction.

GE plans to commercialize Haliade by 2021 and will supply up to 300 of the massive turbines to the Dogger Bank wind farm.

Dogger Bank Wind Farm will be the largest offshore wind farm in the world with a massive 3.6 GW capacity and will power 4.5 million homes in the UK.

Constructing offshore turbines require specialized vessels called offshore Jack-up Installation Vessels.

And the installation of Haliade-X turbines will require the largest jack-up vessel in the world, the Voltaire, being constructed by Jan De Nul Group.

The Voltaire is a behemoth at almost 170 meters long.

Voltaire’s lifting capacity of 3,000 tons is twice the capacity as Jan De Nul’s next largest vessel.

Anyway, the UK is gearing up to be carbon neutral by 2050, and with the help of these incredible offshore wind farms, it is well on its way.

Scotland generated twice the power it needs from wind power in the first half of 2019.

And offshore wind power is going to expand well beyond the UK in the coming years.

Germany is not too far behind the UK.

The country has almost 1500 offshore wind turbines with a capacity of 7.5 GW and is expecting to grow to 15 GW by 2030.

The Global Wind Energy Council projects the global offshore wind market to grow from 20 GW today to 190 GW by 2030.

And the total investment in offshore farms could reach trillion by 2040.

So, wind offers a vast amount of renewable energy that is readily available, no mining, drilling, or fusing of atomic nuclei required.