Interesting Links for 18-01-2022

[andrewducker]

UK Covid cases halve in a week, and Omicron is 'disappearing fast' across most of the UK

(tags:Pandemic UK GoodNews )

ScotWind offshore auction raises £700m - will have capacity of 25GW

(tags:Scotland windpower )

Israel Finds Fourth Covid Jab Is Ineffective

(tags:Pandemic vaccination Israel )

Turn your Wordle result into a cute building with the Townscaper converter

(tags:words architecture games )

Covid-19: Peak of viral shedding is later with omicron variant

(tags:pandemic virus )

Comments

Offshore Wind

[danieldwilliam]

That offshore wind auction is huge.

Just about tripling the development queue.

Creates huge requirement for storage and cables.

Big opportunity for Aberdeen and the North East to move away from oil and gas.

Re: Offshore Wind

[andrewducker]

Yeah, it's a huge vote for the future. I'm delighted by it.

I wonder when there'll be another one.

Re: Offshore Wind

[danieldwilliam]

Not for a while I think. We've still got about 8GW in development from previous rounds and this round is 25GW.

I had a look at the Scotwind page on the Crown Estate's website.

https://www.crownestatescotland.com/news/scotwind-offshore-wind-leasing-delivers-major-boost-to-scotlands-net-zero-aspirations

Looking for things like option expires on XXth YY ZZZZ type information but I couldn't see any.

But I think if we could manage to contruct say 4 GW a year then the current develoment queue runs out to 2031. At 2 GW a year then 2040-ish before we've built everything.

I suspect the things to watch would be the floating wind turbine technology (if it works well and costs fall then there would be more demand for new pitches), cabling (need good progress on cables to export the electricity), storage (need good progress on storage to absorb the timing differences, uptake of electric cars (increases electricity demand)

Re: Offshore Wind

[andrewducker]

I assume we'll get faster at it as we go along.

And also that if we start to run out they'll go and talk to the government about getting more.

Re: Offshore Wind

[danieldwilliam]

We might get faster at it but there are also genuine and hard to solve contraints in the supply chain. I'm thinking specifically of things like construction yards which might have geographical limitations and installation vessels which are a large and specific investment.

And as other countries increase their offshore wind capacity that supply chain capacity gets spread over more people.

So whilst I expect we will get quicker at it (and certainly cheaper) I would not be shocked if the pace slowed down a bit from time to time.

Re: Offshore Wind

[andrewducker]

Do you not think that more installation vessels and yards will be built, as wind power is built out?

Re: Offshore Wind

[danieldwilliam]

I do, absolutely. However those are pretty specialist things we're talking about. Remember the towers for an offshore wind turbine that is seafloor mounted are about 220m tall and weigh several thousand tonnes.

https://www.ge.com/news/reports/x-factor-heres-takes-build-tower-worlds-powerful-offshore-wind-turbine

Boats big enough to install them are pretty specialist vessels.

For example the Brave Tern and Blue Tern operated by Fred Olsen. Cost for the pair $320m. Not sure what the lead time on buying one of those new is - some years, perhaps a decade from first conversation to first paid gig.

https://windcarrier.com/fleet/?gclid=Cj0KCQiAip-PBhDVARIsAPP2xc2kvvAZnwCnYwy47Up1Xgm11cG3H_afm5MrUhzEMDJgnjOtUotHk4IaAr3xEALw_wcB

and

https://www.abpmer.co.uk/blog/brave-tern-jack-up-vessel-our-temporary-neighbour-in-numbers/

and you need a shore facility like this one at Nigg

http://nigg.com/

which can service one of those jack-up rigs, hold a few hundred blades and some towers on the quay side and, preferably, be close to the action so that the installation vessel you are renting for, say £250k a day, with a load capacity of 4-6 towers, doesn't have to transit from the quay side to the construction site for days at a time and can take advantage of short weather windows.

So to expand the capacity in the North Sea you need some more boats at $150m+ each. There is a limit to amount of capital available to build these ships and also a physical limit on the number of shipyards which can build them. You also need some new ports and drydocks right next to the sea and the size of umpteen dozen football pitches. There is a physical limit on the number of locations you put them and / or some trade off of cost vs location vs number of people inconvenienced & environmental impact.

Remembering always that these things are designed to have a working life of 30+ years. So if you build up capacity to install them all in 10 years that capacity has nothing to do for 15 years until the existing towers need to be replaced - this applies more to the port facilities than to the boats.

I'm sure people are currently in the proce

Re: Offshore Wind

[andrewducker]

I guess at least some of it depends on who else sells capacity in the North Sea (or other areas within reach), and that they might then be able to amortise over.

Re: Offshore Wind

[danieldwilliam]

It's a bit of dynamic situation. If some other North Sea state has a large successful auction that increases demand and that supports more supply, but equally that additional supply is split over suppling more fields so might not actually speed up deployment in Scotland's water.

But probably the net best thing would be for the other North Sea governments to get on with the allocation of seafloor.

Re: Offshore Wind

[andrewducker]

I've been hoping they'd get on with this!

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/05/north-sea-wind-power-hub-offshore-wind-farm/

Re: Offshore Wind

[danieldwilliam]

That may have been superceded by floating wind turbines.

Re: Offshore Wind

[andrewducker]

Good point! Would it still make sense to bring them together at an island and run power back in from there? Or is that just adding complication for no good reason?

I managed to miss a second Scottish floating windfarm going into operation in October:
https://www.offshorewind.biz/2021/10/19/worlds-largest-floating-offshore-wind-farm-fully-operational/

And plenty more news on that site:
https://www.offshorewind.biz/news/

Re: Offshore Wind

[danieldwilliam]

I think running them back to an island and then from the island to shore might build in a single point of failure compared to just running some cables from the individual windfarms to one or two coasts.

I see from the article you just send me that developers are expecting to be in operation around 2030 - which implies a 4GW per annum build speed.