Interesting Links for 22-05-2017

[andrewducker]

Johnny Depp Wouldn't Have a Female Villain for 'Pirates 5' Because He Thought It Would Be "Redundant"

(tags: sexism movies OhForFucksSake )

A more cheerful history of philosophy

(tags: philosophy funny faces photoshop )

Dear man who's speaking to a room full of women

(tags: women advice Technology conference )

Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive? (Gorgeous visualisation, should be read on desktop)

(tags: music visualisation history )

Nasa revives 'weird life forms' trapped inside crystals for 60,000 years

I'm sure I've seen this movie.
(tags: WTF life headline )

Fact check: Did the SNP government end hospital parking charges?

(tags: Scotland snp hospital facts )

Van Allen Probes Spot Man-Made Barrier Shrouding Earth

(tags: physics earth space )

The world's biggest wind turbines will help UK power 230,000 homes

(tags: windpower uk )

Texas Woman Fired For Not Being Christian Enough

(tags: usa religion work OhForFucksSake )

Why Japanese teenagers aren't interested in dating

(tags: relationships japan OhForFucksSake )

Six programming paradigms that will change how you think about coding

(tags: programming language design )

Businessman suspends Scottish Labour financial backing over councillors

(tags: politics labour scotland )

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

Huge windfarms!

We are probably approaching the point where onshore and early offshore windfarms are planning for re-planting with much larger turbines which given that they are probably in prime locations will be interesting from a cost perspective.

The comments one the Independent article are "interesting". They make me think that perhaps some sockpuppets are being used.

Also, a typo in that last sentence creates the concept of a sockpoppet, fake internet accounts used to be really sweet to someone who needs to feel some love.

[andrewducker]

I'm all in favour of sockpoppets.

I wonder how the economics of replacing wind turbines looks, and what the payback looks like.

[danieldwilliam]

Having thought about it a bit overnight my considered response is "some" better than doing it the first time.

Clearly easier to do something familiar on a familiar site than doing something novel on a new site.

You ought to have a much, much better idea of the wind flows which should help with turbine placement and lower your project rick.

I'm not sure how much infrastructure you can re-use. You probably can't reuse the footings for the original turbine towers as a) you are putting an 8-12MW turbine to replace a 1-3MW turbine b) you probably need to spread them out a bit more. Some of the subsea cabling you can reuse but you still need additional capacicy. Replacing your 100 * 3MW turbine array with a 60 * 10 MW array means double the peak power output - so you still need to install the 300 MW of cabling and transformers etc again but this is instead of 600 MW.

You are probably in a good site, close to the shore, shallow and with good wind so that helps.

Coming the other way is the fact that currenty existing offshore windfarms will have a much better subsidy regime associated with them compared to a replanted array.

North Hoyle looks to be the first offshore windfarm of any size in the UK, built circa 2003. So, 14 years in to what ought to be a 20-25 year operational life. I'd love to be in the room for the discussions about spending money on increasing the lifespan vs replanting as soon as the subsidy regime expires and financing is repaid. Given that Capex for offshore wind is something like 3/4 of the levelised cost of electricty my guess is going to be that life extention is going to beat replanting most of the time.

One for a discussion with my dad over a beer.