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The Largest Offshore Wind Farm

July 30, 2019 By EarthWise 1 Comment

The world’s largest offshore wind farm recently began operations in the North Sea, a notoriously gusty stretch of open water that has become home to multiple large wind farms.  The new Hornsea One wind farm is located 75 miles off the east coast of Yorkshire in the United Kingdom.

The first 50 turbines are now in operation and are generating electricity for up to 287,000 homes.  When the farm is completed sometime next year, it will have 174 turbines with a total capacity of 1.2 gigawatts, enough to power a million homes.  The farm will send electricity to the UK, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and Scandinavia.  The Hornsea One farm will have more than twice the capacity of the current largest offshore operation, which is also in the UK.

Because the farm is so far from shore, teams of workers will live at sea for two to four weeks at a time maintaining it.  Such operations are unprecedented and required new ways of operating to overcome the logistical and technical challenges of operating a massive power station far from land.

The UK has the largest offshore wind generating capacity in Europe, now more than 8.2 gigawatts and accounting for 44% of Europe’s offshore wind capacity.  All that capacity is one of the big reasons that the UK has been successfully weaning itself off of coal for increasingly long periods of time.

Meanwhile, the US continues to lag far behind in offshore wind with a grand total of 0.03 gigawatts of installed capacity.  That situation may be changing after the federal government auctioned off 3 major tracts of ocean late last year that potentially could generate over 4 gigawatts of power if fully developed.

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The World’s Largest Offshore Wind Farm Just Came Online

Photo credit: Hornsea Project One.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Renewables Taking Over In Britain

March 14, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

A year-and-a-half ago, we reported on the steep decline in the use of coal in Britain, including the conversion of the giant Drax Power Station from burning coal to running on wood chips.  Since then, Britain has been steadily moving away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy sources.  The transformation is being driven by a surge in offshore wind farms currently under construction or about to begin operating.  Britain is in the process of adding over 6 GW of offshore wind to its current total of 8 GW.  Renewables generated one-third of the UK’s electricity last year, and half of that came from wind power. 

In 2018, coal- and gas-fired power stations generated about 131 terawatt-hours of electricity in Britain.  Renewable energy plants – including wind, solar, biomass, and hydropower – produced about 96 terawatt-hours.  Based on the new projects coming online, renewable sources could generate 121 TWh by 2020 and fossil fuel plants are likely to fall to 105.6 TWh as more coal plants are retired.  Thus, within the next year or so, renewables in Britain are likely to surpass fossil fuels in electricity generation.

The transformation in Britain has been rapid and dramatic.  In 1974, the country generated 80% of its electricity using coal.  By 2016, that number had dropped to 9%.  Last April, the British power grid went three days in a row without burning any coal.  The UK is expected to shut down its remaining coal plants by 2025, if not sooner. 

At the same time, Britain’s renewable energy capacity has more than quadrupled since 2010, jumping from 21 TWh that year to 96 TWh last year.  Britain’s energy mix is changing fast and getting significantly cleaner every year.

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Renewables Could Surpass Fossil Fuels in Britain by 2020

Photo, posted August 2, 2008, courtesy of Richard Allaway via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Tidal Turbines Set An Energy Record

October 20, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/EW-10-20-17-Tidal-Turbines-Set-An-Energy-Record.mp3

Two turbines in the Pentland Firth in Scotland recently set a world record for monthly energy production from a tidal stream power station.  In August, the MeyGen installation off the Caithness coast of Scotland produced 700 MWh of electricity, enough to power 2,000 homes.

[Read more…] about Tidal Turbines Set An Energy Record

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