2021 Climate Change

[Nigel]

EU-funded consortium plans €5m pilot project for fully marinised electrolyser inside an offshore wind turbine

“We’re looking into offshore hydrogen production as a future, additional approach to bring vast volumes of renewable energy to where it’s required, thanks to abundant offshore wind. Early lessons from initiatives like this can be used across the region and beyond the world, just as they can be applied to scaling up offshore wind.”

So what offshore location have they chosen?
That rather large energy island a few miles off the EU coastline!:

The project will be developed at Ørsted’s operations and maintenance base in Grimsby UK, which is outside the EU but adjacent to Siemens Gamesa’s offshore wind blade facility in Hull.

Where are they going next

Early lessons from initiatives like this can be used across the region and beyond the world...

Ørsted and Siemens Gamesa pick UK site for EU-funded green hydrogen pilot

Read Ørsted and Siemens Gamesa pick UK site for EU-funded green hydrogen pilot and other wind energy news & analysis on Windpower Monthly

www.windpowermonthly.com

 

[Dashmellow]

World Faces Growing Risk of Food Shortages Due to Climate Change​

“Yields of staple crops could decline by almost a third by 2050 unless emissions are drastically reduced in the next decade, while farmers will need to grow nearly 50% more food to meet global demand, the think tank said.”

 

[kamkar]

As if we are not growing / farming enough already, Denmark could feed itself many many times over, and in the process we have raped our own flora and fauna.
And while we are some of the better nations in intensive farming, then others dont really buy into that, so aside for the end product its not really something to cheer about, and even for all out expertise we still get billions from EU every year, though now far from as much as in the good old day.

Even if it meant the end of my beloved orange juice, i think countries should only grow what they need them self, export of food should be banned.
But of course then we would have to pay the farmers a lot more for their products

As you all know we now have to feed ( and other things ) the Afghans too, when they could just switch over from opium as a crop to whatever healthy to eat and feed them self.

 

[DT MI]

while farmers will need to grow nearly 50% more food to meet global demand

Maybe we need population control as much as, or more than, climate control?

 

[kamkar]

Well i do say if only 80% of us would just die, but it is a highly unpopular way of problem solving, but maybe nature will take care of that with corona 2.0, i am not wanting anyone to force anything which we humans are well capable off.
I am just glad i have not contributed to the population issue,,,, okay most of the time i am, other times when i see a kid do awesome stuff i do feel like i am missing out on something.
Thankfully most times when i see kids perform it is stupid, so i return to my personal status quo pretty fast.

I do not get some countries where people get,,,,,, ? umpteen kids, or i do get the general notion, but then again if you have umpteen kids and you live in a god forsaken desert, those still cant take care of you when you get "old" and at best your status quo will be a very low one and your society will probably not move forward.
And it is intrinsic, cuz when those people then relocate to say my country, they still heave umpteen kids, which lead me to think, either this is very intrinsic or when they move here it is just a geographical thing and culturally they have absolutely no interests of taking advantages of the massive offerings Danish society offer VS where they come from.
And sadly i am all the time prompted to believe the latter.

 

[Nigel]

Whipsnade zoo is building a new 1MW solar farm to power the zoo:

 

[Nigel]

So floating wind turbines, even when in coastal waters are treated as ships and can be flagged on the other side of the world. Being permanently tied to the seabed 15Km off Scotland, they will never go near the Marshall Islands, literally the other side of the world in time zone +12 and the southern hemisphere!:

As well as being constructed to ABS Class, each of the five 9.525 MW floating turbines is flagged with the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI).

World's Largest Floating Wind Farm Starts Operating, Statkraft Buys Entire Output

The installation of the wind turbines at Kincardine, the world’s largest floating wind farm, has marked the start of the long-term Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) between Statkraft and Kincardine Offshore Windfarm Ltd (KOWL).

www.offshorewind.biz

Floating wind seems ready to use, but it is still expensive compared to fixed wind so probably won't make economic sense in most places for a long time yet, except maybe to provide backup by locating it under a different weather system than can be done with fixed wind. This may be the world's largest installed floating wind farm at 48MW, but that is tiny compared to the latest fixed offshore wind farm project in Scotland at 4.1GW:

SSE to merge Berwick Bank and Marr Bank offshore wind farms

SSE Renewables is merging the proposed Berwick Bank and Marr Bank projects, offshore Scotland to create the 4.1GW Berwick Bank Wind Farm.

www.nsenergybusiness.com

 

[kamkar]

Aaaa yes circumventing the tax man as i understand it the UK system are very favorable for these kind of procedures.
Not that my own country are much better, but at least despicable companies like google / apple / facebook only build data centers here, they do not launder their tax here, even if a Danish bank was involved in one of the largest ever money laundry operations, but they was mainly into kinds like Putin and his henchmen ripping off the Russian people.

Just read the Norwegian data authorities will no longer use facebook, they recommend others to quit using it too, and truth be told i do not understand why that company exist today.

 

[Nigel]

Now these are decent sized floating wind turbines that you Danish are building for us, and located in a very windy place, but how do you manage to stop a 300 meter (1000ft) tall floating wind turbine blowing over in a gale? That is the same height as the Eiffel Tower!

Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) has started a public consultation for the 100MW Pentland floating offshore wind farm off the north of Scotland showing that construction could start as early as spring 2025.

The project will consist of up to 10 floating turbines, with a maximum blade-tip height of 300 metres, to be located around six kilometres north-west of Dounreay, Caithness, an online exhibition has shown.

Pentland Floater Aims for 2025 Construction Start - World-Energy

Public exhibition reveals planned timeline of 100MW project by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners

www.world-energy.org

Pentland Floating Offshore Windfarm

www.pentlandfloatingwind.com

 

[kamkar]

I think you guys are guinea pigs here, i am not aware of any testing of big floating turbines here.
I assume if its "brain" fail in big winds and it keep turning and into the wind, the load on the damn thing must be massive

If the winds are high enough it might turn into the worlds largest gyro copter, which will probably be nicknamed fat Nellie.

 

[Nigel]

I think you guys are guinea pigs here, i am not aware of any testing of big floating turbines here.

300 meters is twice the height of Denmark, so you probably don't have any water deep enough to float it!

Yes, it is a trial site for pre-production units, we like testing things!
But we also want some more big wind farms far enough away from the present ones that we don't get a big high pressure weather system sitting over the whole lot for a couple of months, as seems to have happened this summer leading to a gas shortage, so we want a lot of deep water turbines if they can be made competitive with just building extra shallow water ones and some hydrogen storage, and to be competitive they need to be big.

 

[Nigel]

I assume if its "brain" fail in big winds and it keep turning and into the wind, the load on the damn thing must be massive

Even if its brain works, when it is generating 10MW, there must be the same power in the opposite direction trying to twist the tower out of the water! Then there is also the direct power of the wind pushing the turbine and tower at about half that.

Also, a fixed 300m turbine should be able to generate around 20MW, so I guess these are turning themselves down in high winds to avoid being blown over, while designed to generate their 10MW at times when normal turbines are giving up in lighter winds thus making the power more valuable.

 

[kamkar]

Many Danish companies have their hands in the air, as in the German election there was much talk of going green, and also in the digital area Germany is like a 3 world country, so here they could also learn / buy a lot from Denmark.
And Germany are already our biggest trade partner.
Now i just wonder where they will get all those people to make so much more, CUZ just about any trade here are screaming for skilled people, and the ones already there they are fighting over with rising wages as a result, and it is not like Denmark is a low income country as it cant be that with the tax level here.

Of course if we are mainly going to export IP, then it will be fine, and Germany also need jobs where right now we Danes well many companies have to turn down orders, and not for the sake of corona, simply not enough hands or hours in the day to fulfill those orders.

Though our stock index have dropped a little in the past days, but nothing serious and it will probably recover soon.

If i won big in the lottery, well getting my dream house build, it would probably not going to happen in a year or two, and thats just the building and materials aspect, nothing to do with architects or design of the house.
And Danish build sites / constructors already have tonnes of eastern EU masons ASO running, cuz no way in hell would we be able to keep up with just Danish craft men.

Politicians even when it is as good as it will ever be, are they able to make things happen,,,,,, what loosers they are.

 

[Nigel]

Now i just wonder where they will get all those people to make so much more, CUZ just about any trade here are screaming for skilled people, and the ones already there they are fighting over with rising wages as a result, and it is not like Denmark is a low income country as it cant be that with the tax level here.

As far as I can see, the Danish company behind this floating wind farm is a pension fund management company for Danish Pensions, the work will be done in the UK: "The project development team is based in COP’s Global Floating Wind Competence Centre, recently established in Edinburgh.".

Copenhagen Offshore Partners | New Floating Wind Competence Centre opened in Edinburgh, Scotland

cop.dk

The only real link to Denmark I see, apart from the money supply, is:

The Partners will leverage this global expertise to create opportunities for Scottish students to undertake exchange programmes with universities in Denmark and Japan, to allow the sharing and development of new ideas and skills which will provide a unique opportunity for offshore wind related international learning. In the near term all three partner organisations hope to work with the University of the Highlands and Islands to offer internship opportunities for existing students.

ScotWind partners and University of Highlands and Islands to develop future offshore wind skills

www.sserenewables.com

 

[kamkar]

Lots of money in forced and voluntary pension funds here, the politicians would just love to get their hands on those.
And they have, at least the ones they forced on people, so some years ago you had the choice to have them paid out in the hope you would spend them, or take them out and put them in your own pension scheme.
For the people been forced into that in all the years it was around 60.000 Dkkr a head, i spent mine on down payment for the little red car, and then some shopping in far away countries so in essence Denmark got next to nothing out of my money,,,,,, which i liked immensely. ( this was during / tail end of the financial crisis back in 2008 or there about )

 

[Nigel]

Ohh, now those massive turbines have become small!

Danish utility Ørsted submits environmental report for 1.5GW Skåne Havsvindpark with 27MW turbines.

"Developer submits assessment citing turbines with power ratings up to 27MW, a 320m rotor diameter and tip heights up to 385m"

 

[kamkar]

There are lounder and louder voices when 5 - 6 smaller turbines in the field "behind" the house are to be replaced with 3 mega turbines.

 

[Dashmellow]

Speaking of louder and louder, I recall visiting the site of a mountain ridgeline wind farm here in Vermont and witnessing first hand what they sound like when standing perhaps 150 -200 feet away from the closest turbine. Each turn of the blades made a loud whooshing thump with a pressure wave that you could feel in your body. And these were relatively modest sized turbines by today's standards. I can't imagine the sound and pressure waves generated by these massive turbines. Of course, that is why they site them way out in the ocean but it seems highly likely that they will affect wildlife above and below the ocean surface.

 

[kamkar]

Yeah. There is plenty of challenges and i assume sacrifices to be made.
I for one would prefer some high tech way of making power like fusion and not have wind turbines to look at, and we might also get there some day, but for now i dont think there are any way around turbines and solar panels.

We do have a host of rules here in regard how and where wind turbines can be placed,,,,, of course Danes have that, we have rules for most things, and of course most often those rules are inept.
For instance in the new lately, the airport where out new noisy F35 fighters are to be stationed, several houses near the airfield have been expropriated by the government as noise levels will be way too high, even with the not correct noise level of F35 the government work with.
Anyway those houses are now for sale again by the government. even if no one can live there, and the people that have not sold their house, they better well be jet fanatics, cuz F35 is OMG loud VS our meager F 16 fighters.

It amaze me how relaxed Danes are about elections here, where one come around i am at my most aggravated / frustrated and panicky state, and i hate it with a vengeance.

 

[Dashmellow]

Yeah, the Vermont Air National Guard up north is home for a squadron of F-35A Lightning IIs and the base is part of the Burlington International Airport which is a civil-military facility. Many people in the vicinity are not too pleased since the change-over from the older F-16 Falcon, as they are noisier. They manage the whole affair by training at set hours and they announce the schedule windows ahead of time. They have a "noise comment" form you can fill out on their web page but I don't know what good it does but it may help them adjust their flight paths if they get too many complaints from a particular area.

I have to admit, it's kind of cool to see them fly over my property now and again and we also get F-15s from the Massachusetts Air National Guard’s 104th Fighter Wing flying over my location. Then again, they don't take off or land anywhere near here so we just get a brief air show once in awhile.