THE Offshore Wind Thread (merged)

[skiptamali]

I checked out this article about offshore wind farms. Although brief, it had one very important point that has stuck with me: wind 15+ miles off US coastlines could produce over 900,000 megawatts of electricity. According to the DOE and this article, that's equivalent to all current U.S. power sources combined.

Let's check out the feasibility of this type of power production. Does anyone here have extensive experience in wind turbines? An expert quoted in the article says we could see these projects as soon as 2012-2015.

Is anyone familiar with the environmental impact of offshore wind farms? All I know is that several European countries are ahead of us here, with projects in progress.

It seems to me that if we can drill offshore, we can install a wind mill... but how secure is energy transmission back to the coastline?

I'd think that coastal utilities would be absolutely salivating over this opportunity, as it has potential for high public support. If we don't see the turbines every day, and most of us aren't inconvenienced by their presence, will Americans do anything but demand them? Their installation and maintenance could produce green collar jobs.

[vampyregirl]

Egmond aan Zee, offshore Netherlands has a 108 megawatt capacity. Enough to power about 100k Dutch homes. It is Shell WindEnergy's first major offshore wind park to date. hope this helps.

[joeltrout]

Thunderhorse is expected to produce 250,000 barrels of oil per day and 200 million cubic feet of natural gas a day.

How much energy per day is in 250,000 barrels of oil and 200 million cubic feet?

How many windmills will it take to get the same amount of energy that Thunderhorse produces in 1 day?

If the argument against offshore drilling is view obstruction then windmills is a very bad idea.

joeltrout

[baha]

Accourding to http://www.jwiwood.com/faq/conversion.html

1 kilowatt-hour of electricity = 3,413 Btu or 1 Megawatt-hour = 3,413,000 Btu
1 cubic foot of natural gas ... 1,008 to 1,034 Btu
1 barrel of crude oil ... 5,800,000 Btu

Therefore...turn the crank...

250,000 barrels of crude = 1,450,000,000,000 Btu or 1.45 Trillion Btu per day
200,000,000 cubic ft of natural gas = 201,600,000,000 or 201.6 Billion Btu per day
(I used the smaller of the two numbers above)...Murphy's law...

Add it up = 1,651,600,000,000 or 1.6516 Trillion Btu

900,000 megawatts electricity = 3,071,700,000,000 or 3.0717 Trillion Btu * 24 hours = 73.7208 Trillion Btu per day (if operating at 100% efficiency)

So covering all the coasts with windmills will produce 73.7208/1.6516 or 44.636 as much energy as one oil well !!!!

Call it 45 times as much as ONE oil well. I'm sure someone on this forum knows how many oil wells there are in the Gulf of Mexico alone??

Which is why we are a carbon fueled society and why when TSHTF we are going to really be hurting.

OK, so I was bored....

Someone want to check my work??

[Tyler_JC]

The conversation of crude oil into usable energy is NOT 1:1.

There's your error.

[skeptik]

"Instead"? Why not both? They're not mutually exclusive. Plenty of free space off Americas East & West coasts as far as I can see.

...do the geophys. (which should have been done years ago) reserve the best prospects for exploratory drilling, put the turbines somewhere else.

[mos6507]

Plenty of free space off Americas East & West coasts as far as I can see.

And thanks to the rapidly increasing dead zones, not a lot of environmental conerns either.

[Dezakin]

Which is why we are a carbon fueled society and why when TSHTF we are going to really be hurting.

OK, so I was bored....

Someone want to check my work??

Well fortunately nuclear power is a little more energetic. You would only need about 15-20 reactors to make up the size of this very large oil well.

250000 bpd is quite a lot for a single site as far as I understand.

[baha]

I got to thinking about it last night. If we use 20 Mbarrels per day of crude then that is 80 Thunderhorse wells. So all the windmills produce more than half of our current liquid energy usage.

Of course windmills produce electricity and oil is a liquid fuel so this is really apples to oranges. According to the article, the windmills can replace our electric powerplants. They weren't talking about oil wells. But there is no doubt that we could replace it all with windmills. It would take alot but it could be done.

I just personally don't think it will be done. At least in time to prevent the crash. That is why I am hoping for a fast crash. If we realize SOON that we have to get off our asses and start building alternatives before the price is too high we might yet survive.

And the sooner the sheople realize that the free lunch is over, the sooner we can prioritize our energy usage to support those things that are really important.

[mommy22]

I thnk that they should put windmills on the platforms of offshore oil rigs as soon as they are done pumping up whatever is there to be pumped.
If we are going to have electric cars in our future, we need as many electric sources as possible.
We were on vacation in Cape Cod, and it was kind of funny...those who lived away from the beaches had signs in front of their houses pro-wind farms, and those houses on the beachfronts had signs opposing wind farms off the coast.
Also, is there any effort to make small (individual house size) windmills? Where I live (NEOhio) it's either windy or sunny almost all the time...if there was a combo unit solar/windmill that would sit on my roof, I'd buy it!

[KingM]

OK, so I was bored....

Someone want to check my work??

Easy enough to debunk. Thunder Horse is a huge project, not a single well. If you had 44 THs to add in the US alone, you'd triple American production of crude.

I don't know about the economics of offshore wind, but your back of the envelope math doesn't invalidate it.

[skeptik]

Plenty of free space off Americas East & West coasts as far as I can see.

And thanks to the rapidly increasing dead zones, not a lot of environmental conerns either.

Thought we were discussing oil rigs and windmills. Agricultural run off has nothing to do with it. No dead zones in the North Sea... Old oil infrastructure there provides anchorage for sessile organisms and increased fish populations on what would otherwise be a bare muddy bottom.

I That is why I am hoping for a fast crash. If we realize SOON that we have to get off our asses and start building alternatives before the price is too high we might yet survive.

Bit of confused logic going on there? If you want to start building alternatives in order to survive a 'fast crash' is the last think I would have expected you to want. Surely you'd want as much time as possible to prepare and a 'slow crash' in order to ease the transition. During a 'fast crash', in the sense that I understand it, nothing much of anything gets done.

[mos6507]

Also, is there any effort to make small (individual house size) windmills? Where I live (NEOhio) it's either windy or sunny almost all the time...if there was a combo unit solar/windmill that would sit on my roof, I'd buy it!

You could try attaching some tiny pinwheel generators to your roof but I don't think it would do much. You need to get a large windmill high in the air to catch enough wind to be worth doing. That's when the zoning nazis will swoop down on you.

[rockdoc123]

I don't think it is as easy a calculation as how much energy generated by a turbine versus an oil/gas well. The offshore wind turbines are huge. The amount of energy consumed to build one needs to be taken into account. A couple of years ago I spoke with a senior exec from a company that had installed an offshore wind turbine in Scotland. His comment is it would never pay for itself if not for gov't incentives. Basically burning more oil/gas energy to build the thing than you would ever see in return.

[mos6507]

Thought we were discussing oil rigs and windmills.

Environmental impact is a big part of the OCS drilling debate.

[skeptik]

Thought we were discussing oil rigs and windmills.

Environmental impact is a big part of the OCS drilling debate.

Right. Different subject. Nothing to do with dead zones then. Environmental impact of offshore drilling. Any conclusions yet?

Strangely enough you'd never get permission for onshore drilling in the UK on the scale seen in the USA, but there haven't been any serious problems (apart from the Piper Alpha disaster which resulted in major loss of life, but no significant pollution) with offshore UK drilling over the last 40 years.

[baha]

The fast crash scenario has a "shock" factor. The real problem we have is denial. The issue is not how many wells we can drill but how can we get away from oil alltogether. I fully support offshore windmills or onshore for that matter. Fast crash will mean there is still oil available for building windmills. Slow crash means by the time we start building there will not be enough energy left to support the construction.

I also support new drilling but we need to use the energy gained to construct alternatives. The prevailing attitude is...drill more wells, get more oil, problem solved. But no matter what, eventually the oil will run out.

The only way to convince people to change their ways is to hit them in the wallet HARD AND FAST!!! A slow crash will not do that.

[rockdoc123]

The fast crash scenario has a "shock" factor. The real problem we have is denial. The issue is not how many wells we can drill but how can we get away from oil alltogether. I fully support offshore windmills or onshore for that matter. Fast crash will mean there is still oil available for building windmills. Slow crash means by the time we start building there will not be enough energy left to support the construction.

I also support new drilling but we need to use the energy gained to construct alternatives. The prevailing attitude is...drill more wells, get more oil, problem solved. But no matter what, eventually the oil will run out.

the argument from a sustainability standpoint makes sense until you realize if you are counting on thousands of windmills for your energy needs there is also going to be a lot of maintanence requirements. How are you going to power the maintanence boats?, what about lubricants for the moving parts?
My guess is the only possible answer involves a host of cascading alternatives (nuclear, wind, water, etc) that each have a market niche.

[joeltrout]

OK, so I was bored....

Someone want to check my work??

Easy enough to debunk. Thunder Horse is a huge project, not a single well. If you had 44 THs to add in the US alone, you'd triple American production of crude.

I don't know about the economics of offshore wind, but your back of the envelope math doesn't invalidate it.

But the advantage of Thunder Horse is it is a single location. Much like the THUMS project in Los Angeles. There are three drill islands. The biggest is 12 acres and the other three are 10 acres each. However they have drilled more than 1,200 from those sites and continue drilling today.

Environmental safety really isn't a factor on offshore drilling. The view obstruction is a big issue. I would rather look at a couple of offshore platforms rather than hundreds or thousands of windmills.

joeltrout

[VMarcHart]

Does anyone here have extensive experience in wind turbines?

I do. What's up?