Destructiveness of Profits and Outlays Associated with Operation of Offshore Wind Electric Power Plant. Part 1: Identification of a Model and its Components

Abstract

This paper describes identification and components of destructiveness of energy, economic and ecologic profits and outlays during life cycle of offshore wind electric power plants as well as the most useful models for their design, assembly and use. There are characterized technical conditions (concepts, structures, processes) indispensable for increasing profits and/or decreasing energy, economic and ecological outlays on their operation as well as development prospects for global, European and domestic markets of offshore wind electric power industry. A preliminary analysis was performed for an impact of operators, processed objects, living and artificial environmental objects of a 2MW wind electric power plant on possible increase of profits and decrease of outlays as a result of compensation of destructiveness of the system, environment and man.

Life Cycle Analysis of Ecological Impacts of an Offshore and a Land-Based Wind Power Plant

“…Therefore, it is impossible to express the impact of a wind power plant by only one characteristic. The environmental impact is a synthetic, complex and overall characteristic which is made up of component characteristics, including harmful relations between the wind power plant and particular elements of the environment [15,16].…”

“…Examples of a useful (functional) effect U of a wind farm operation include: benefits from wind farm productiveness, the major effect UG being: minimization of emission related to conventional energy production methods, additional effect UD: social advantages. In turn, the following unrecovered losses S can be distinguished: degradation of the environment caused by exploitation of natural resources, functional losses S': reduction of the nominal power of conventional power plants; the process related losses S" including operating costs: power supply, monitoring, operation, and maintenance [11,16].…”

“…It causes disruption of natural biological processes which eventually leads to devastation. In relation to wind power plants, nonsozological means the harmful impact of a rotor on/by manmade objects of the environment; that is, everything that has been created by people from processed or natural resources to be intensively used [16,17,19].…”

“…A life cycle of a wind farm is accepted to consist of four successive stages ( Figure 1 in Reference [16]): formulation of the necessity to design, construct, manufacture, use, and finally, after the end of its operation, to recycle it. The last stage of each life cycle is also a contribution to the new one.…”

“…Due to a lack of clear reasons for exclusions, all categories of the impact included in Eco-indicator 99 were analyzed. The level of the impact exerted by selected processes of the wind farm post use utilization was analyzed as well (25% storage on landfills and 75% recycling [14,16,28,29]; the possibility of combustion with energy recovery was neglected due to the structure of high content of inflammable materials). Dominant areas affecting human health, the quality of the environment, and depletion of natural resources were identified.…”