Centrica Begins Construction on $1.2 Billion Wind Farm in U.K.'s Northeast

[phantom power]

Centrica Plc (CNA), the U.K.’s biggest energy supplier, started building a 725 million-pound ($1.2 billion) sea-based wind farm near Skegness in the northeast.

The 270-megawatt Lincs wind farm should begin producing power by the end of next year, Julian Mears, a spokesman from West Sussex-based Centrica, said today by e-mail.

Siemens AG (SIE) is providing 75 turbines of 3.6 megawatts each for the project with all of the electricity produced to be sent to the National Grid, Mears said.

The facility is being funded through a joint venture between Centrica, which owns half the project, and Dong Energy A/S and Siemens Project Ventures GmbH, which own the remainder, said Mears.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-04/centrica-begins-construction-on-1-2-billion-wind-farm-in-u-k-s-northeast.html

[XemaSab]

1. Dong and Siemens are building this?

/sense of humor of a third-grade boy

[phantom power]

2. no doubt

[DCKit]

3. Can't wait for someone to tell us how or why this is not an appropriate location for wind power.

Oh, and ^ bwahahahahaha. Sick bastids.

[phantom power]

5. There's an environmental impact study for that project here:

http://www.centrica.com/files/reports/2006cr/index.asp?pageid=312

[XemaSab]

6. There's no link to the full ES?

Interesting....

[txlibdem]

4. This will be Centrica's largest wind farm to date

http://www.centrica.com/index.asp?pageid=923

Thanks for posting!

[GliderGuider]

7. Are my numbers right?

$44 per watt of capacity?
Around $120 per watt of realized generation?

WTF? Oh well, I guess we have to spend the money on something, we can't take it with us...

[phantom power]

8. I get $4.44/watt nameplate

[GliderGuider]

10. That's what I get for PWSD

(Posting While Sleep Deprived) Thanks for the double-check.

[kristopher]

11. This is the first step in a 40GW project of 10,000 turbines.

Therefore I'm not sure all of the costs mentioned should be laid at the feet of this particular development. Breaking into offshore is going to be expensive, though; there is no arguing that. The plus side however, is that there is a definite economy of scale that will push down the costs.

That's something nuclear talks about, but due to its complexity can never deliver.

[GliderGuider]

12. Nukes were never commoditized.

Ergo, no economies of scale. Plus it was a stupid idea to begin with. Tool monkeys rule, though!

I can't wait until the Earth is grassed with solar panels and treed with turbines. Then we'll have won!!!!

[txlibdem]

13. To quote your hero, "Now there you go again."

From your post:
"...economy of scale that will push down the costs. That's something nuclear talks about, but due to its complexity can never deliver."

Please don't mention that there are 6 companies working to get approval for their SMR designs --which will be mass produced in a factory. Mass produced reactors will bring costs down and quality will be monitored 100% of the time, every step in the construction process.

While what you say is accurate on this date, once those 6 companies get approval and start mass producing small and medium sized reactors the game will change.

[kristopher]

15. When did Carter say "Now there you go again"?

How many years away from actual deployment do you think we are with small modular nuclear fission reactors?

How many small modular nuclear fission reactors do you think will be mass produced in the next 25 years?

How much will their electrical output cost when they enter a market filled with competing technologies that are going to be busy deploying over the next 25 or so years we are preparing this miracle fission technology? 5X? 10X? 50X?

How do you ensure the quality of the upstream supply chain for the "mass production" effort? Do you expect your small modular nuclear fission reactors to have an acceptable component defect rate of 1 in 1000 as is common in the auto industry?

Or should the component defect rate for the small modular nuclear fission reactors have a lower ratio such as 1 in 10,000?

How about 1 in 1,000,000?

What kind of cost/benefit thinking do you envision will dominate the planning and manufacture of these small modular nuclear fission reactors? What do you think the public will want?

Do you know how economies of scale are maximized by competition?
. All firms sell an identical product.
2. All firms are price takers.
3. All firms have a relatively small market share.
4. Buyers know the nature of the product being sold and the prices
charged by each firm.
5. The industry is characterized by freedom of entry and exit.

How long will it be until we are able to meet those 5 criteria for small modular nuclear fission reactors?

We could get into the questions of security and waste for your miracle small modular nuclear fission reactors, but why bother...

[FBaggins]

What's so "miraculous" about smaller reactors?

Unlike the storage technologies that you claim are essentially "off the shelf"... there actually ARE hundreds of small reactors in use around the world.

[kristopher]

17. Under the control of military procurement and operations.

Taking something from the military supply chain to the civilian world is not at all a given - unless you think the open market is big on $200 hammers and $600 toilet seats.

As for "miraculous" that is the way the proponents of nuclear fission like to portray all the nonviable technologies they claim are just around the corner.

[kristopher]

20. Lots of unanswered questions...

Your response ignored these questions.

How many years away from actual deployment do you think we are with small modular nuclear fission reactors?

How many small modular nuclear fission reactors do you think will be mass produced in the next 25 years?

How much will their electrical output cost when they enter a market filled with competing technologies that are going to be busy deploying over the next 25 or so years we are preparing this miracle fission technology? 5X? 10X? 50X?

How do you ensure the quality of the upstream supply chain for the "mass production" effort? Do you expect your small modular nuclear fission reactors to have an acceptable component defect rate of 1 in 1000 as is common in the auto industry?

Or should the component defect rate for the small modular nuclear fission reactors have a lower ratio such as 1 in 10,000?

How about 1 in 1,000,000?

What kind of cost/benefit thinking do you envision will dominate the planning and manufacture of these small modular nuclear fission reactors? What do you think the public will want?

Do you know how economies of scale are maximized by competition?
. All firms sell an identical product.
2. All firms are price takers.
3. All firms have a relatively small market share.
4. Buyers know the nature of the product being sold and the prices
charged by each firm.
5. The industry is characterized by freedom of entry and exit.

How long will it be until we are able to meet those 5 criteria for small modular nuclear fission reactors?

We could get into the questions of security and waste for your miracle small modular nuclear fission reactors, but why bother...

[txlibdem]

21. Carter? That'll be the day.

Carter cared enough about America and the environment to stand on principle and enact an energy policy that would have had us 100% energy independent by the year 2000 (probably earlier as the ingenuity of the American people are set upon the problem).

Your post is nothing but an exercise in pulling numbers out of thin air (or some place even worse). Economies of scale are not maximized by competition, they are a function of volume production alone. Every single product that you use today is better and cheaper than when it first came on the market. That's not due to competition; it's volume of production alone that brings economies of scale. You obviously do not know the meaning of the phrase. Competition is what keeps each of the companies in that segment constantly improving their product, making it cheaper and safer, more efficient, etc.

Right now 6 companies are trying to get their designs approved by the government. Your post has already declared they will be outrageously expensive. Really? Even before the factories are build and before a single product has been sold, you already know what they will cost??? Really?

[kristopher]

25. I gave you a list of questions and you addressed none of them

I repeat them for you below, but first let me say again how poor your grasp of economics seems to be. Competition is an essential element of capturing the benefits of economy of scale. You can mass produce as many of something as you want, but unless there is competition that forces the manufacturer to pass on the savings, it means nothing as far as "capturing the benefits"; all you have is a prolific monopoly.

How many years away from actual deployment do you think we are with small modular nuclear fission reactors?

How many small modular nuclear fission reactors do you think will be mass produced in the next 25 years?

How much will their electrical output cost when they enter a market filled with competing technologies that are going to be busy deploying over the next 25 or so years we are preparing this miracle fission technology? 5X? 10X? 50X?

How do you ensure the quality of the upstream supply chain for the "mass production" effort? Do you expect your small modular nuclear fission reactors to have an acceptable component defect rate of 1 in 1000 as is common in the auto industry?

Or should the component defect rate for the small modular nuclear fission reactors have a lower ratio such as 1 in 10,000?

How about 1 in 1,000,000?

What kind of cost/benefit thinking do you envision will dominate the planning and manufacture of these small modular nuclear fission reactors? What do you think the public will want?

Do you know how economies of scale are maximized by competition?
. All firms sell an identical product.
2. All firms are price takers.
3. All firms have a relatively small market share.
4. Buyers know the nature of the product being sold and the prices
charged by each firm.
5. The industry is characterized by freedom of entry and exit.

How long will it be until we are able to meet those 5 criteria for small modular nuclear fission reactors?

We could get into the questions of security and waste for your miracle small modular nuclear fission reactors, but why bother...

[txlibdem]

28. Obtuse

You cannot answer those questions for your coal power, nor my wind power, solar power, geothermal, tidal power, wave power, nor SMR nuclear power. I'm not even positive that the CEOs of those companies can answer all that.

So you pose a mile-high barrier before SMRs can gain the Kris Koal seal of approval while ignoring the same factors for coal power? Why, that's just silly.

[FBaggins]

14. It's reasonable to think that some of the costs should be accounted to other parts of the project

But it's hard to believe that they're putting all of the infrastructure in for a final project 150 times the size of this piece.

Either way, the result is still a very expensive project. Assuming a pretty solid capacity factor (say... 35%?), it's the equivelent of paying $13 Billion for a new Westinghouse AP 1000... and these wind turbines aren't going to last for 60 years.

OTOH, that's what we should EXPECT from early installations as the technology improves.

You're certainly right that there's no reason to expect the entire project to cost $180 Billion.

[kristopher]

16. Of course they aren't putting in all infrastructure.

Most offshore wind resources are expected to deliver around a 40-44% CF. That region is particularly good.

ETA: you also need to factor into your comparison the external costs for nuclear/coal and zero fuel costs for wind.

[FBaggins]

18. Can you back up that capacity factor claim?

That's a heck of a lot closer to "miracle" levels than SMR having economies of scale.

Offshore wind CF for the U.K. jumped in the most recent year... but that was from 28% in 2007 all the way up to 34% in 2009. Mostly because wind conditions were particularly good.

How are they getting up to 40-44%?

ETA: you also need to factor into your comparison the external costs for nuclear/coal and zero fuel costs for wind.

Absolutely. It was a "back of the napkin" estimate... But fuel isn't much of an expense for nuclear either.

Note that I wasn't saying that the farm shouldn't be built. I'm all in favor of it. There's just no need to be pollyanna-ish about it. It's quite expensive.

And after we look at "external costs", we have to account for the fact that the npp could be there 60-80 years later still producing power. How long will the wind turbines last?

[kristopher]

19. The capacity factor of early fission reactors was about 50%.

Resource analysis is accomplished using decades worth of wind data recorded at 6 minute intervals and at least one year of fully recorded instantaneous data.

That data is analyzed in this format:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weibull_distribution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power#Distribution_of_wind_speed

The operational reliability of turbines is extremely high. We are on a learning curve with offshore, but there are no indications of any major engineering challenges that would preclude achieving the known potential of the resource.

[FBaggins]

22. Was that a "no"?

The capacity factor of early wind farms was also lower... but that's also irrelevant.

In both cases, improvements in process and technology are to be expected.

Improvements in Mother Nature are not.

The operational reliability of turbines is extremely high.

I agree. That's why that factor no longer makes much difference in future CF advances.

The question is how often the wind blows. Have there been any wind farms that average 40%+ over the course of a year or not?

[kristopher]

23. I see, you didn't want the actual answer, you wanted a set up to a bogus critique

I gave you the basis for the 40-44% CF assessment - decades worth of measured wind - in other words, HOW OFTEN THE WIND BLOWS!!!

The difference is the new technological challenges of offshore turbine reliability, which is lower than onshore at this time.

There is no reason to think these technical challenges are going to stop offshore turbines from achieving the same level of reliability as onshore turbines as we encounter the failures and overcome their causes.

[FBaggins]

24. Not bogus... a straight question. Why can't you give a straight answer?

I've made clear that I support the project and offshore wind in general. I'm asking you whether 40-44% is just pie in the sky or has some wind farm actually achieved this.

Yes or no?

[kristopher]

26. That is a false choice, not a "straight question"

Your question was answered twice so stop acting like a spoiled child.

[GliderGuider]

27. Here's a straight answer. Yes, at least one offshore wind farm has reported this.

Vattenfall reports that their Danish Horns Rev offshore wind farm has an average capacity factor of around 43% (600 GWh/year of electricity from 160 MW of capacity).

[txlibdem]

29. Nice find, Glider!

Look at this wind speed map:
http://www.sustainableenergyworld.eu/calculate-windturbine-annual-energy

This map shows that the Horns Rev wind farm gets winds at least 6 meters per second. It also shows that the entire Western and Northern coasts of Ireland plus all of Scotland and even the Isle of Man should be able to achieve similar results. Now that is good news!

The entire western and northern coast of Norway, the south-west coast of Sweden, and the coast of Finland also have the same high wind speeds.

[DCKit]

9. Add in the nuclear or coal bonus, and it's FREE. nt