Offshore Wind: System-Level Viability?

摘要

Offshore wind turbine rotors and generators create value by 'farming' the wind, converting its energy into electricity. Costly infrastructure - the very high towers, deep seabed foundations, buried high voltage insulated cables, on-platform transformers and complete subsea transmission grid - and expensive at-sea maintenance are required because this electricity is not where it is needed. The cost of this infrastructure cripples the investment payback ratio. High investment across the world in specialised manufacturing plant and tens of thousands of experienced workers enable the rhythm and flow that mass produces some 20,000 wind turbines a year of the now-standardised designs of wind turbines erected on land close to where the energy is needed, driving their cost effectiveness. Offshore represents a 2.5% extension of the market, in disjointed projects, requiring the expensive development of much larger wind turbines and requiring yet more investment in much larger factories but offering no chance of continuous rhythm-and-flow production and also requiring the development of much new and expensive offshore infrastructure-building technology to make it possible at all. This kind of 'bigger' is not 'better'. Technical heroics is no substitute for the lean and agile thinking within the industry itself that is steadily developing lighter, larger, more dynamically responsive rotors and lighter, taller towers, enabling today's standardised wind turbines to cost effectively 'farm' the lighter winds close to where the electricity is needed, with minimal infrastructure costs.