Offshore windfarms 'can provide more electricity than the world needs'Asking for friend who thinks nuclear is the only thing possible to remove power emissions ...
Analysis by the International Energy Agency (IEA) revealed that if windfarms were built across all useable sites which are no further than 60km (37 miles) off the coast, and where coastal waters are no deeper than 60 metres, they could generate 36,000 terawatt hours of renewable electricity a year. This would easily meeting the current global demand for electricity of 23,000 terawatt hours.
Friday, December 06, 2019
Has anyone debunked this yet?
This study, it seems to me, should have already been debunked by now, if it contained genuine big flaws:
Its premature. You need to match it up with molten metal battery storage. Which can be done cheaply eventually its true. Less than 30% energy overhead in a mature system. The other problem is that until you have that storage, wind energy cannot reproduce wind energy. So that all that massive energy that it takes to set up a wind farm is really burning more coal. Next you have to consider the life and maintenance cost of the units. They only last 15-18 years. Unless that changes and can be upgraded to 50-60 years than they will be an energy sink.
ReplyDeleteWorst of all is the near immediate pitting on the fastest moving part of the blades. With these huge structures the blades may look like they are turning slowly. But where the blades are turning at their fastest its like 200 miles per hour. That part of the blade gets all these micro-pits, this reduces the efficiency of the blades. And so the impressive headline efficiency falls to pieces very quickly. So really its the wrong decade to be pushing these too quickly. They may have their place in the sun sometime or other. But for now we have to have only mild incentives in place or else its just going to be more fossil fuels wasted.
IEA research is rarely debunked
ReplyDeleteHo ho. Good one old bloke. We could probably debunk it on the spot. All we would need to do is see if their study took into account everything I mentioned. If it missed even one of these factors out, then we should presume the idea is dead this decade and that we just have to be patient and wait for improvements that will make these things more viable in later decades.
ReplyDeleteYou put in just a few non-subsidy incentives and then you let things play out. Otherwise you are in violation of economic science.
Otherwise you are in violation of economic science.
ReplyDeleteThat's much better than being concordant with economic science.
The key is that if these things actually worked the oligarchy would not be funding them. They are all about energy deprivation.
ReplyDelete