The great offshore revolution that never happened
Dogger Bank Wind Farm
Dogger Bank will become the World’s Largest Wind Farm and maybe the World’s largest white elephant too.
Despite years of research and hyperbole we can conclusively say that offshore wind is still a charity project, losing money from start to end. The GWPF highlights a new Norwegian report that shows that the Net Present Value of Dogger Bank is “minus £970 million.”
Britain’s biggest, newest offshore wind farm still isn’t profitable. It may be killing eagles and hypnotising crabs, but it isn’t cost effective at making energy, and it isn’t cost effective at changing the global weather either.
NetZeroWatch saw it all coming:
The report confirms as series of findings published by the GWPF and others [1–5], which show that offshore wind costs are very high, at best are only falling slowly, and are far above the auction strike prices being agreed.
Andrew Montford, Deputy Director of Net Zero Watch said:
“We have been warning since 2017 that there has been no revolution in offshore wind costs. Every time we get new financial data from offshore wind farms, the cost estimates go up. Just this week, our estimates for the Seagreen 1 wind farm have increased by nearly 20%, and those for Dogger Bank by a similar amount.”
The Government’s Net Zero plans rely on a five-fold increase in the wind fleet, mostly from offshore developments, and an extraordinary decline in the cost of the power it produces.
The latest findings mean that the costs of delivering Net Zero will increase by hundreds of billions of pounds, and probably by trillions.
The wind might be free, but collecting it over vast kilometers of ocean is not so easy.
I wonder how many proper studies where done or are being done on the effect of these wind turbines on the myriad of fish that can inhabit the area.?
Decommissioning will leave lots of artificial reefs 🙂
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Yes it seems wind farms are a sink for funds….maybe they should have a “Titanic” rating?
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White elephants and UFOs – Unicorn Flatulence Oscillators – money for jam.
Weren’t the Dogger Banks once dry land, before the ice melted and sea levels rose? Must’ve been way back around 1992 when the Rio Earth Summit convened to slave the planet.
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Friesian, Dutch fishermen have been picking up Mesolithic artefacts , tree stumps and Bison bones for hundreds of years – and the story goes on. Isostatic rebound has lifted it and the surrounding lands since the advent of the Holocene. In a thousand years some future trawler will hook onto one of these beauties.
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Yes, in my birthplace on the North Sea coast of England, you can walk amongst the stumps of a fossilised forest at low tide.
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I might add that it was also the home port of the U.K. Distant Water Fishing Fleet, which fished up to North Cape and Iceland. They regularly trawled up artefacts from the North Sea, such as mammoth tusks, etc. and brought them home as curiosities.
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Madness
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What part of Net Zero and renewable energy is not madness? Which proponent of either is not completely ignorant if not stupid?
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Just imagine the cash flow when a bit of corrosion sets in, maintenance increases and efficiency falls away, not to mention major repairs of storm damage, undersea cable failure etc.
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NET Zero Intelligence strikes again! 🙂
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For a value of minus one billion, it’s all red ink … all the way down.
It’s a case of some of the elite are not getting their `fair share’ of the GTSP … the Great Tax System Plunder.
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When you take in all the inducements and divers financial assistance ,plus and your mandated feed ins and still get paid by the consumer for not producing what would your average inner-city Green Socialist IT investor complain about.
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There is a great piece in the Spectator on wind and solar. Basically the argument is that Green energy is random and so useless without storage and the Americans have done their sums on the whole of life cost of energy storage. It varies from 10c per kwhr for pumped hydro to 30c per kwhr for batteries! Even if these storages were adequate, and wind and solar was completely free of cost, they are be expensive.
Oil and gas and coal though are portable, storable, tradeable, scalable, dependable, commandable energy in themselves, apart from being fundamentally free as well. And as a coal power station can be endlessly repaired like a factory, the whole of life cost of coal energy is tiny. Which is why they have to be closed. There are billions to be made in bad science. As Andrew Forrest knows.
It shows what happens when science ignorant politicians rely on their instincts and end up following the shamanist wizards and trust in earth, wind, sky, water and fire. Instead of fossil fuel and nuclear.
And now the belief that private industry including Forrest will be motivated to invent new as yet unimagined technologies while trillions are spent on things they admit do not work and will never work. The more likely scenario is that religion is very profitable and Climate Change has become a religion. Boris Johnson has become a druid. Can we please have our power stations back?
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And Andrew Forrest, billionaire, has a great scheme that we should pay for his brilliant original hydrogen idea. The fact is that there is no diesel ‘subsidy’.
It’s a game. Diesel was used almost exclusively by farmers and miners and some trekkers. But diesel became very popular with the Green movement and grey nomads the government wanted their cut. So the taxes came in what politicians call tax ‘reform’. Officially this was for the building and maintenance of public roads. So the farmers and especially miners argued reasonably that they used their own roads and rarely used public roads, so they were reasonably exempted from paying this impost on essential primary industries. Now the Greens and Climate opportunists like Forrest claim this is a ‘subsidy’ and they want the cash.
So what he is proposing is that farmers and miners as he used to be should be paying massive diesel taxes. And he should get the money. Isn’t it puzzling that he said no such thing when his income came from mining?
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I read an article that announces that Forrest is going to “electrify” his earth moving fleet. Let us sing songs of praise for good ol’ Twiggy for he’s true blue..
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Twiggy has gone in to the green grant mining business in a big way, all that free money just waiting to be handed out to his pie in the sky projects.
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Terry McCrann wrote in the Australian a few days ago that if petrol is now selling at 170 cents per litre and a barrel of oil is selling at US$70 then the following applies. An unprocessed litre of crude costs 70 cents. There is a Federal tax, supposedly for roads, of 43.3 cents and a GST of 15.5 cents which leaves 41 cents for the distiller, the retailer and for the many kilometres of transport from the ME to Singapore and Singapore to Australia and within Australia. Imagine if we stop people driving how much the government will lose in taxes. They will have to impose a road tax on kilometers traveled each year so that cheap EV is getting dearer. Add the cost of “cheaper than Coal” renewable electricity plus the cost of the additional transformers and power lines to cope. We are governed by genii.
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There is no….and newer was in reality, …any sensible financial justification for the average motorist buying an EV..
Any apparent reduction in “fuel” costs are more than offset by the much higher initial capital cost of the EV, and/ or the cost of a Solar system for recharging ..if that is the chosen option
In fact, in Australia, “fuel” costs are pretty much a wash anyway with domestic power at $0.25-0.30/kWh, and petrol/diesel at $1.5-1.6 $/ltr.
No,..EV ownership is still very much a misguided, virtue signaling exercise !
As a “driver” , from a technical viewpoint, EVs are impressive,..but they are all just such poor value that i wont use my money to do that.
i would rather have a 1960s Ford Cortina..(Lotus preferably ) …which would actually be a sensible financial investment that appreciates with time !
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To put that in comparable terms (I assume the costs are in US$ )
Pumped hydro $100 per MWh
Batteries $300 per MWh
Current US RETAIL prices range from $104 (Idaho) to $234 (California). Wholesale (i.e. to industry) price are $78 (Idaho) to $218 (California).
(I notice in passing that costs in New England and California – all Democrat run- are much higher than elsewhere).
Snowy2 has said it would require $A40 per MWh extra to break even, but that doesn’t have to add the cost of dams, generators etc. which are already there, so there seems little doubt that the figures from the USA are right. Norway doesn’t have pumped storage at all and the only pumped storage plant in Sweden shut off operation. Both get the benefit of electricity from Germany when the wind is blowing and excess electricity has to be sold to those who can use it at a low price, so when that happens they just reduce hydro output and save water.(And when the wind farms aren’t working and Germany needs electricity they send some back there (at a suitable price so Germany gets the highest electricity prices in Europe – the joy of being Green).
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All very rational argument.
You are aware that Lets-Go-Brandon believes the solution is to make all the other sources much more expensive so that your numbers will start to look very good?
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Like a car that can only operate 2.1 days in any week, and no guarantee which days of the week it will operate.
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Anyone who finds this information surprising failed high school math.
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For the Left, these bird choppers have the advantage that the evidence of their avian victims is consumed by the sea.
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One of the many unexpected reasons for rapid deterioration of these subsidy harvesting machines is erosion of the leading edge of the blades by aerosolised droplets of sea water. It also happens on land-based machines as well but more so marine ones.
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David:
Dredging up memory from 25-30 years ago, it applied to high speed marine units (e.g. racing speedboats). The biggest, fastest ones lasted about 7 races- a rich man’s sport.
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Graeme, I think those boat propellers fail for a different reason, mostly cavitation causing erosion due to the explosive collapse of bubbles in a fluctuating pressure field rather than leading edge erosion.
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There is cavitation in air too. The collapsing bubbles are replaced with evil CO2 molecules. Very abrasive stuff that.
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When those little air bubbles are first compressed then explode they release a great deal of energy in the form of heat which melts the base material. Several thousand degrees if I remember correctly.
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Mark Mills exposed these TOXIC S & W disasters in this very easy to understand 5+ minute video.
These super expensive disasters last about 20 years and then have to be buried FOREVER in landfill.
Why would any government ever fall for these crazy, TOXIC, fra-dulent, dilute fantasies?
None of this is difficult to understand, yet after Glasgow we’re going to WASTE ENDLESS TRILLIONS $ on this idiocy until 2050, ’60, ’70 and beyond?
Anyone not see a problem?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqppRC37OgI
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One of the reasons the Left destroyed the education system was to extinguish critical thinking and general historical and other knowledge. In the case of wind turbines few people understand that the intermittent energy sources of solar and wind are NOT a replacement for proper power generation. They are suitable for harvesting subsidies for the Elites, ONLY.
There was a good reason mankind ditched intermittent low energy density sources of power such as wind, animals, people/slaves and seasonal water streams around 250 years ago as soon as a viable steam engine was developed.
It is not understood by the Sheeple that many thousands of wind turbines over hundreds of square km of land plus associated forest clearing as well as massive associated grid scale storage is required to replace just one compact gas, coal or nuclear power plant. Proper hydro (not Turnbull’s Snowy Hydro 2) can use a lot of land for pondage but recreational lakes are created plus habitats for fish and water supplies are also created.
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Not arguing David, but imagine what the leftists will do after enough time goes by and there is no critical thinking remaining among the left? Oh, never mind.
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Meanwhile both the Arctic and Antarctica are very COLD.
Antarctic from April to Sept has just set a new record cold period for instrumental data and 20 ships are locked up in the Arctic and Russian icebreakers are coming to the rescue.
Yet the Arctic was supposed to be ice free years ago according to Gore and heaps of other L W loonies, just check out their prophesies at the link.
We’re supposed to be living in an era of science and yet we’ve fallen for another crazy religious cult AGAIN.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/climate-fail-arctic-sea-ice-growing-nearing-highest-extent-in-two-decades/
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The Left are now claiming cooling is caused by warming, at least those few of them that are prepared to acknowledge the worrying cooling trend.
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Not to mention the wet weather in Eastern Australia lately. Now calling La Nina “dangerous”. The stupidity of our experts who advise government is repeatedly on display.
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Whenever there is a new subsidy harvesting installation, its proponents say it will power so many thousands or millions of homes, in this case six million.
In fact they are incapable of powering ANY homes whatsoever.
Unless there is an arrangement by the intermittent power producer or the home owner for battery storage, the home ends up being powered mostly by coal, gas, nuclear or proper hydro power. For a home to be claimed as “powered by” these things, there must be an arrangement such that ONLY the intermittent power is consumed and nothing from reliable producers. Smart electricity meters with the proper programming could ensure that happens.
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To: David Maddison @ #12.1:
Ah c’mon, DM! The cooling has barely gotten started: just last year. It’s got years — decades — to go yet. It will be for at least one full Solar Cycle, probably 3 or maybe even more.
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Oops: thumb prints on my glasses helped misplace this!
Should be for #12.1 …
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Here’s a good summary of the 2016 UK BAS, Turner et al study, that found cooling at the Antarctic peninsula since the 1990s.
The Gore donkey said this was the fastest warming place on Earth but now we know he was wrong. In fact the last 2000 year proxy studies have found many periods of warming and cooling and the so called modern warming started in the 1920s.
OH and co2 levels in 1920 were just 303 ppm and today about 415 ppm. Gosh something doesn’t seem to correlate very well for their much loved theory AGAIN?
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2016/07/21/antarctic-peninsula-has-been-cooling-for-almost-20-years-scientists-confirm/
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Glad I didn’t invest a cent in that lot.
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If you think wind energy is free, just ask a yachtie how much upkeep costs.
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Standing fully clothed in the shower turned full on with cold water only while tearing up $50 dollar notes used to be the description for sailing through storms. Now it would be cutting up $100 notes with our plastic, devalued currency.
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The wind might be “free” but it costs a huge amount to collect.
And the two best days in a boat owner’s life are:
1) The day the boat was bought.
2) The day the boat was sold.
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Just wait until Dan Andrews gets re-elected and arranges for the 3 offshore wind farms to be built off the Gippsland coast. That should set new records for white elephants – white mammoths more likely
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/sustainability/funding-boost-to-power-offshore-wind-farms-in-victoria-20211123-p59bcp.html
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And capacity based only on nameplate capacity, and therefore could not possibly deliver 20 per cent of Victoria’s energy (needs) or power 1.8 million homes.
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Many poorer customers in the UK have to choose to either HEAT or EAT following their country’s disastrous ENERGY policies.
Energy prices are SOARING as they start to try and prepare for another cold winter.
Unbelievable (for a modern so called wealthy country) but true.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/energy-crisis-bulb-ofgem-citizens-advice-universal-credit-b967809.html?mc_cid=34a984f712&mc_eid=dcbe0ef09b
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Science rationalists should adopt that expression, “heat or eat“. Good one.
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There was an old engineering saying that’s applicable to this faux electricity generation;
“an engineer can do for a shilling what some politician can do for a pound.”
In the case of wind turbines, all of the evidence confirms the fact that NO engineers were involved in designing or costing these monstrosities.
I have used a provocative word there as a preamble to a fuller description of the situation.
To an engineer the turbines would be the ideal definition of fragility: they seemed to have been designed to fail.
By contrast the compact spinners driven by clean steam give the impression of “forever”.
To the electricity user, the quarterly bill is now much larger than when coal fired generators were in use exclusively.
To the engineers who have been put out of sight in a dark room by politicians, the impending catastrophe of early failure and nightmare of repair or decommissioning is all too real.
But, all is not lost: somebodies are raking in huge amounts of cash and they love it and wish that the world could be even greener. Wow.
But the world moves on and the triumvirate is here to stay;
1. Global warming and death by incineration due to CO2 levels.
2. Green, free, energy.
3. Global Virii with appropriate testing up your nose and Jabberwockys in your shoulder.
Good luck world.
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The NSW Minister for Environment is now NSW Treasurer, Matt Keen (or Matt Green), and an advocate of unreliable energy and electric vehicles, he is an accountant.
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God help us.
Please.
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I thought that making him treasurer reporting to the outgoing treasurer was a stroke of genius. Now he can’t ignore the wider economy and hopefully can”t escape scrutiny.
Here’s hoping.
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The 2020 Nature study of the Antarctic continent from Singh et al found no warming since 1950. Here’s the Abstract and the link. Willis Eschenbach linked to this very recent study when he tried in vain to find their so called Climate emergency. Yet we’re supposed to spend endless TRILLIONS $ on this idiocy for decades into the future?
BTW co2 levels in 1950 were about 310 ppm and today about 415 ppm.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41612-020-00143-w#change-history
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” 6 million British homes ”
It is an intermittent power facility, not a farm.
What will be the backup facility? Does that exist or is it being built now also? Ownership? Location?
Don’t you just love these build 2, use 1 concepts?
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But wait! There’s more! Windmills are going to make our power cheaper! Its a promise! Its science!
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Household power bills are set to fall over the next three years as state government commitments to cut greenhouse gases drive an influx of cheaper renewable power into the electricity grid.
The Australian Energy Market Commission’s price trends report, released on Thursday, found average annual residential bills in New South Wales are expected to decrease by $50, or 4 per cent, by mid-2024. In Victoria, bills are expected to decrease by 7.7 per cent, or $99, and in south-east Queensland they will drop by $126, or 10 per cent.
The AEMC report said the biggest driver of price falls over the next three years would come from cheaper power sources from wind and solar projects. These weather-dependent generators are set to be supported with on-call dispatchable power from large-scale batteries and gas.
“New generators, mainly renewables, continue to expand capacity and drive significant falls in wholesale prices. We are also seeing positive early evidence of how energy storage, like batteries, is helping to lower prices,” the report said.
Across the national electricity grid there are 2671 megawatts of new solar power generation committed to come online until 2024, and 1393 megawatts of new wind power. The intermittent supply from these power generation sources will be backed up by 904 megawatts of additional gas-fired capacity and 470 megawatts of large-scale batteries.
AEMC chairwoman Anna Collyer said the findings showed that “integrating renewables in a smart way makes it possible to have both lower emissions and lower costs for consumers”.
“We can now see far enough into the future to be confident that power prices paid by consumers will continue to trend downwards over the next three years, despite the staged exit of Liddell power station in 2022 and 2023, one of the biggest coal-fired generators in the national electricity market,” Ms Collyer said.
“We have just under 2500 megawatts (of mostly coal power) expected to exit the grid over the next three years, there are almost 5500 megawatts of committed new large-scale generation and storage projects coming online over the same time period.”
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/renewable-energy-to-drive-down-household-power-bills-over-next-three-years-20211124-p59bnv.html#comments
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In three years no-one will remember this article, so they’re safe!
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Keep a copy of the article and bring it out in three years time.
Although Anna Collyer will probably have moved on or retired by then, so her successor will be able to disclaim any responsibility for it.
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Very soon it is likely that a real large storms will head down from Arctic and test how resilient these structure are. During the next couple of weeks or so, high winds and storms will give a small taste of what is likely to come this winter.
See https://wxcharts.com/?panel=default&model=gfs,gfs,gfs,gfs®ion=uk&chart=wind10mkph,overview,winteroverview,convective_overview&run=18&step=003&plottype=10&lat=54.308&lon=2.160&skewtstep=0 for more weather model info.
More maintenance will be the probable outcome, and so yet more money will have to be spent.
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The Dogger Bank came up in my boyhood reading [maybe I liked “messing around with boats” stories]. It is dangerous, stormy water. Leave it to the fishermen.
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Only a complete idiot would advocate to place equipment in these locations. Corrosion and other issues due to constant salt spray not only cause ongoing headaches, but the extra cost to try to mitigate drives up costs of the equipment significantly. To say nothing of the massive costs to locate these monstrosities in the middle of the sea.
This is the Left in all its glory. Ignore engineering issues, ignore financial issues and ignore the scientific issues and it will be all fine – of course not.
We have the politically correct saboteurs leading the Net Zero charge. None are engineers, and none have any idea what they are doing, other than destroying our country.
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There is a series of TV programmes on one of the history/science channels called Abandoned Engineering.
This wind farm looks to be a suitable subject for a future programme.
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To try and pacify residents who will suffer inconvenience, when trenches are dug so HV cables can be laid, the windfarm companies try and bribe them by
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/norfolk-community-projects-to-receive-15-million-pounds-8515518
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Are there any studies on effects on local micro climates by large scale wind developments? One would assume that large scale installation of wind farms in specific areas would impede the natural wind flows from high pressure to low pressure areas. Just a thought.
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Tasmania is powered by Hydro + Wind + Solar (98%). While I don’t endorse “renewables”, they do work in a few places on the planet, but nowhere near enough to switch off traditional energy sources.
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Wind plants are not there to produce power. They are there to make the rich richer and the poor live in darkness while destroying the environment.
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The plant would appear to be working exactly as planned…….
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The Turbo Encabulator,,, the solution to all our power troubles??????? https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Turbo+Encabulator++&&view=detail&mid=3AB39487502AE4939E3C3AB39487502AE4939E3C&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3DTurbo%2520Encabulator%2520%2520%26qs%3Dn%26form%3DQBVR%26sp%3D-1%26pq%3Dturbo%2520encabulator%2520%26sc%3D8-18%26sk%3D%26cvid%3D26B81DB9659A42B1BD492FF9EA4D89E1
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