Energy Handbook 2011 - GBR

P o w e r S u m m i t - T h e E n e r g y H a n d b o o k 2 0 1 1
F o c u s : W i n d P o w e r
Vattenfall invests
heavily in offshore
wind farms;
Photo courtesy of
Vattenfall
Wind energy, in particular, can be
deployed very quickly. “If you want to
build and commission a nuclear plant, for
example, you are looking at 10 years,”
says Anders Søe-Jensen, President of
Vestas Offshore, a division of the world’s
leading wind turbine manufacturer. “Wind
is predictable and wind is competitive. If
you could tell me the oil and gas price
going forward, you would be very rich
– the one sure thing is that it’s going to
be more expensive. But I can tell you the
price of wind ten years from now: it’s
still free!”
The future offshore
Opening the Thanet wind farm in
September 2010, a windswept Chris
Huhne, the UK’s Secretary of State for
the Department of Energy and Climate
Change, barked into the microphone: “If
Kent is the Garden of England, then this is
its most magnificent water feature.”
The £780m Thanet project is currently
the world’s largest offshore wind farm.
It hosts 100 turbines over an area of
more than 35 km2 and has a nameplate
capacity of 300 MW – enough to power
around 200,000 homes. “This is the
future,” said Huhne.
While lagging behind most of Europe
in terms of overall renewable energy
production, the UK has the most extensive
experience in offshore wind. “The UK is
by far the most mature and interesting
market,” says Anders Søe-Jensen of
Vestas Offshore, which has built six
offshore wind farms in the UK. The latest
of these is Thanet, which is owned by
Swedish power company Vattenfall.
Vestas currently employ more than 500
people in the UK and expect to have
an additional 400 engineers working on
blade development when it opens an R&D
facility on the Isle of Wight in 2011.
While the UK has a natural abundance
of wind suitable for power generation,
political will has been instrumental in
moving the sector forward. “We look at
how much better we could be doing and
feel that the level of ambition should be
higher,” says Charles Hendry, UK Minister
of State for the Department of Energy and
Climate Change. Given the scale of the
task at hand, it is vital that political will –
and indeed financing capacity – remains
behind the industry.
total development pipeline to 49 GW.
According to Maria McCaffery, CEO
of RenewableUK, the offshore sector
currently has the potential to deliver
150 TWh of electricity annually, or just
under half of the UK’s net consumption.
With the exception of 63 MW in China,
all commercial offshore wind is in Europe
at present, with the UK and Denmark
responsible for two-thirds of that.
Internationally, progress in development is
still modest. While the 689 MW installed
in 2009 was twice that of 2008, and
cumulative installations passed the 2 GW
mark, this still represents only about
1.25 percent of the world’s total wind
capacity.
The existence of relatively few offshore
turbine manufacturers, combined with
pockets of upward pressure on turbine
prices, has meant that supply constraints
have continued to inhibit the development
of the global offshore wind industry. With
many new projects planned, however,
worldwide offshore wind is expected
to grow to about 15.5 GW by 2014,
representing some 3 percent of total
installed wind capacity.
Infrastructure Challenges: When
the Wind Blows
The UK may be pioneering in its approach
to offshore wind, but there remain large
holes in the plan. Akio Fukio of Mitsubishi
Power Systems, one of the UK’s leading
turbine developers, says: “Even though
the renewable opportunity is there, what
about the supply chain? What about port
facilities? What about transportation
and accessibility? What about transport
vessels? There is still a big shortage of
infrastructure.”
stream of projects is critical,” he says.
Sound port setups are vital to facilitating
an increase in installed offshore wind
capacity. Across Europe, governments
and the private sector are revitalising tired
ports with fresh investment. Den Helder at
the northern tip of Holland, for example, is
undergoing massive expansion. “We want
to be a strong base in the Netherlands
for maintenance and inspection activities
for wind turbines and for the assembly of
turbines and blades,” says Kees Visser,
Den Helder’s Port Alderman. In the UK,
the ports of Blyth in the north-east and
Lowestoft in the east are undergoing
similar refurbishment.
One of the biggest infrastructure challenges
facing wind generators in Scotland
concerns transmission charging. The UK
maintains a system of charging according
to distance from demand. It was designed
decades ago, when fossil fuel power plants
could be sited close to demand centres.
“This leads to the absurd situation where
Scottish renewable generators must pay
many times more than coal-fired plants in
the south of England – £20.16 per MWh
in the north of Scotland, compared to a
subsidy of £6.68 per MWh in Cornwall,”
explains Scottish First Minister Alex
Salmond. “The disparities could be even
greater in offshore or island generation.
For example it could be up to £97 per
MWh in the Western Isles once the costs
of the vital cable link to the islands are
factored in.”
Moving to a generation mix that is heavily
reliant on a volatile wind supply inevitably
poses infrastructure challenges the world
over: the wind is not always blowing, and
there may well be occasions when supply
either far exceeds or falls far below
demand. According to David Hodkinson,
UK Business Development Manager at
Vattenfall, this issue may be overblown.
“Management systems are already in
place. In many respects, wind is easy to
predict: it can be seen days in advance,
so steps can be taken then to prepare
alternate generation to take over when
necessary.”
From tiny community projects in Nepalese
villages and Scottish farms to the massive
offshore installations off the coasts of
the UK and Denmark, from the foothills
Infrastructure for offshore wind, in fact,
of the Pyrenees to the sprawling prairies
is almost universally lacking as the
of North America, wind turbines are an Ambitions for new wind capacity, which
world gets to grips with changing power
increasingly visible presence in the global could create tens of thousands of jobs,
sources. Peter Clibbon, Vice President
generation mix. “Wind is no longer just will require investment of around £100bn
of RES in Canada, claims that Canadian
a green credential for companies or over the next ten years, a figure similar
infrastructure too requires significant
governments, but a legitimate and serious in scale to the investment needed to
investment to accommodate greater wind
power generation option that meets a establish the North Sea oil and gas
capacity. “There are quite a number of
significant proportion of energy demand industry in the 1970s. This investment
constraints that need to be resolved with
in a clean and sustainable manner,” says is already underway. In January 2010
heavy investment. The government has
Helmut Herold, Regional Manager for the Crown Estate leased 32 GW worth
stated that they do have a plan for that Even if wind is somewhat predictable,
REpower Systems in Quebec and East of sites as part of its UK Offshore Round
and we’re optimistic that they will deliver. though, the problem of supplying energy
Canada.
3 development program, bringing the
Delivering on time to enable a steady when the wind isn’t blowing still exists.
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