Need help on some Off-Shore Wind calcs

The wind doesn't always blow and it doesn't always blow when you want it to blow. The rating on turbines is the maximum capacity, which means a 500 MW wind farm will produce that much for only short period of time. The utilization factor really depends on location and offshore is typically higher than onshore, but you want is high utilization over peak hours. This gives you a good idea of costs of a project close to actually going forward, and siemen's supplies 75% to the north sea wind.
Siemens to Supply $2.6 Billion U.S. Offshore Wind Plant - Bloomberg
Cape wind is a $2.6B project with 130 3.6 MW turbines.

If you can build a 600 MW fast cycling ccgt natural gas facility and retire 300 MW of the worst coal the cost will be approximately $700M plus $0.02/kwh for natural gas and labor at today's prices. That seems like a better investment. A quick look at the virginia coal map, and Yorktown is over 60 years old, and doesn't contol it's SO2 of Ash in generator 1 and 2 which are grandfathered from complying, but EPA is finally regulating their pollution and requireing scrubbers, so they will close next year. How about building natural gas to shut the next most polluting plant. It would do more for the environment than building offshore wind, and offshore wind can be added in the future if costs go down, or natural gas prices go up.

Coal-fired power plants: New report claims Yorktown power station ash is among seven in the state polluting waterways - Daily Press

 

The array could theoretically produce 500 MW maximum at any time, but on average would produce ~ 250 MW if the location is very good.

As a money question I tend to estimate by using a 30 year life and 1 penny/kWh maintenance*. Using those figures, the
$2.5B = 2.5 *10^11 pennies
produce
250 MW * 365 days/year*24 hours/day*1000 kw/MW*30 years = 6.57 *10^10 kWh over the lifetime.
This works out to 25/6.57 = 3.8 cents a kWh for the installation.


The 1 penny/kWh figure is from land installations. I have no idea what off-shore are.

 

Prices go down with volume and experience. Who are you waiting for ?

2 cents/kWh for nat gas sounds right today, but what will it be over the next 30 years ? What will it cost with a carbon tax ?

I suspect the most important aspect of the political argument has more to do with who benefits. I imagine there is a lot more local work tied to a wind farm than a NG plant. Not just the installation phase, but maintenance as well.

 

This might be of interest. My electric company are 100% renewable with mostly wind turbines and the odd solar array.

They have 60 MW of wind turbines (they're only a small company) and have a page on their website that shows how much they generate at any one time. Sometimes this is 50MW, sometimes 10mW or even 5MW!!?!

It's interesting to see though (and updates every few seconds);

Real Time Wind Energy Production - Our Green Energy - Ecotricity

 

You may have missed it in my previous post, but Cape wind is going to be using 3.6 MW turbines. I would wait to see if that is sucessful before putting in more east coast wind, as it should be going into construction soon. By the time a go is given, 6MW may be better than 3.6 MW turbines idk. Most of the experience is in the North Sea, not the atlantic. Cape Wind will be offseting a plant that uses petroleum, and the area still needs more natural gas infrastructure. Other than that fiasco with the Kenedy's and the Koch brothers Cape Wind (offset oil, still needs natural gas infrastructure so risky candidate for simply more ccgt) and the Gulf Coast (less regulation as texas not US is only needed for authorization, less expensive build, cost can be spread to a few large industrial users that want offshore wind) are better areas in the US to experiment with offshore wind than virginia.

The Danish are experimenting with a 8MW turbine.