Offshore Wind Moves Into Energys Mainstream
Source: NY Times
LIVERPOOL, England When engineers faced resistance from residents in Denmark over plans to build wind turbines on the Nordic countrys flat farmland, they found a better locale: the sea. The offshore wind farm, the worlds first, had just 11 turbines and could power about 3,000 homes.
That project now looks like a minnow compared with the whales that sprawl for miles across the seas of Northern Europe.
Off this venerable British port city, a Danish company, Dong Energy, is installing 32 turbines that stretch 600 feet high. Each turbine produces more power than that first facility.
All of those factors in concert have helped push costs down. Dong says its anticipated costs of electricity generation have halved. As recently as 2014, they were 156 euros, or $166, per megawatt-hour, a wholesale unit of electricity, on a British project. By last year, they had fallen to 78 per megawatt-hour on a series of wind farms off the Netherlands.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/business/energy-environment/renewables-offshore-wind-green-power-dong.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Looks like the air might get cleaner regardless of the politics.