Looks cool as hell. Here in NJ a bunch of NIMBY pricks have been fighting offshore wind because it “ruins the view” which I find laughable. Seeing clean energy being produced makes me smile, who cares if there’s a windmill on the horizon.
So just for context.
Fixed wind turbines can only really be put in in 60m depth or less. Water that shallow is usually close the coast though there are some exceptions like the dogger bank, but that’s rare.
If you are 100m off the ground you can see 36 km out to sea. (Or be visible 36 km from shore).
The EEZ of countries, where you can install wind turbines, is 370km from shore. Currently (new tech) there seems to be floating offshore capable of operating at 1km deep waters.
If floating wind takes off. Visibility might not be an issue at all. Wind speeds are higher and more constant out out sea. It’s a win, win, win. If it can be made cheap enough.
Visited a jersey beach recently. I’d vote to put turbines up across the whole fucking coat. I don’t care.
Yeah, but coal fires create pretty sunsets
Looking on Zillow, it looks like a beachfront house on Long Beach Island in New Jersey is ~$2.5-5 million.
Cross the street, go one house back from the beach – the differentiating factor between the two being whether there’s a view out over the ocean – and the price drops to maybe $1.5-2.5 million.
So you figure that people there basically bought a house plus a window with a fancy picture in it, and that picture cost maybe one to several million dollars.
I wouldn’t pay several million dollars for a fancy picture, but I imagine that if someone has done that, then they’re probably liable to get pissy if people go and fiddle with it.
Yeah that’s definitely a component, although I’m not sure it would even actually hurt the value. The beaches are public so they already cannot control that view. My favorite of their arguments was all of them very quickly becoming whale activists and stating with certainty that windmills kill whales.
Then they can pay to produce clean energy or reduce energy usage for people in the rest of their city to make this unnecessary. Or as another commenter put it, eat our entire collective asses.
Fuck them.
But more realistically there should be a land value tax in place anyway. If the price does go down I wouldn’t be totally against giving them money. But would have to be over a period of say 10 years to avoid any market inefficient panic causing a temporary dip.
If some dude paid a million dollars to control the ocean and the power supply of the region, then people are probably going to get pissy at the overwhelming, unearned privilege.
I quite like windmills, I’d love to have a view of some working.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LRgGmH-nCBo
Download that and set it to fullscreen on a 4k monitor on your wall.
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I kinda like it too, I don’t t see the appeal of not seeing anything on the horizon.
Don’t get me wrong I’m 100% behind renewable energy but do you seriously not understand someone saying ‘hey I like this beautiful natural scene without machinery all over?’
Before the largest things on the horizon were trees and perhaps the odd church or water tower. These windmills tower over anything there is on the countryside.
The point I’m trying to make here is that our definition of tall has significantly shifted over the last 20/30 years. E.g. windmill 5km away is visually still twice as high as the church tower which is 500 meters away from you.
I think my wording was a bit wrong. I do see the appeal, but I don’t really see a big difference. Either there’s nothing at the horizon, or there are ships and oil rigs, or there are offshore windparks. It really doesn’t matter, to me at least.
I live in the northern part of Germany. North Frisia consists solely of farming plots and nothing else. It’s such a boring landscape. Everything is flat and unnatural. Nowadays we have shitloads of windmills in that area and it makes it a bit more interesting to the eye.
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That’s cheating!
Y though
Because companies have been promising tidal power for decades and it never works because the tide is really strong and full of animals, plants, and garbage that really shouldn’t be around large moving machinery.
So this is the alternative
I wasn’t asking a question. I was just making a statement.
hahah
CorPower Ocean announces wave energy breakthrough in Portuguese waters from March.
Edit: There’s also Eco Wave Power Commences Sending of Clean Electricity to the Israeli National Electrical Grid from January.
Edit2: There’s the 254MW Sihwa tidal power station
Tidal power plants aren’t a new technology though, so I’m guessing you meant wave power.
Y not?
What part of this don’t you understand? If two turbines is good, and three turbines is better, obviously five turbines would make us the best fucking wind platform that ever existed. Comprende? We didn’t claw our way to the top of the wind platform game by clinging to the two-turbine industry standard. We got here by taking chances. Well, five turbines is the biggest chance of all.
Sure, we could go to four blades next, like the competition. That seems like the logical thing to do. After all, three worked out pretty well, and four is the next number after three… Why innovate when we can follow? Oh, I know why: Because we’re a business, that’s why!
The hell does “single-capacity” mean here? The article doesn’t specify.
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After searching around, I’m somewhat sure that it’s an incorrect statement. The capacity usually measures the megawattage output which is certainly not one. And I found a few older articles that don’t even mention “single-capacity”.
It has a single mooring so I assume that’s what was meant.
How much energy do they spend to keep this floater in place?
0? It’s anchored to the sea floor.
I’m more intetested how much per kW it produces cost, and the maintenance cost over its life span. It has to answer the question is it economical to build and maintain.
This could very well. Floating wind is expensive wind, so you could think of this as two turbines for the installation cost of one, or you could think of it as one pylon that produces double the power.
This is true, but investing in research and subsidizing its production is how we drive costs down. We’ve done a really incredible job of getting clean energy costs down from where they were, but there’s no need to slow our efforts down now
AFAIK wind hasn’t changed much in a long time. Not much to improve really. Cost is materials and labour, both going up. Probably still cheaper then coal.
Can link a video about how they work, and the chalenges tomorow if you want.
Wind has come down a lot, just over a longer time. Solar and storage are what have really plummeted recently. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/levelized-cost-of-energy
One of the big challenges now in the US is streamlining permitting, for renewables and for transmission upgrades and expansions.
I’d be interested to see the video you mention!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LklUVkMPl8g
He goes on about the bigger picture, while I was thinking about just manufacturing and maintenance. That graph cost going down could be due to manufacturing ramping up. You need big machines to make big machines.
It’s interesting how fast the price per kWh went down. I’m glad.
