Evaluation of offshore wind resources by scale of development

Abstract

Offshore wind energy has developed rapidly in terms of turbine and project size, and currently undergoes a significant up-scaling to turbines and parks at greater distance to shore and deeper waters. Expectations to the positive effect of economies of scale on power production costs, however, have not materialized as yet. On the contrary, anticipated electricity generation costs have been on the increase for each increment of technology scale. Moreover, the cost reductions anticipated for progressing along a technological learning curve have are not apparent, and it seems that not all the additional costs can be explained by deeper water, higher distance to shore, bottlenecks in supply or higher raw material costs. The present paper addresses the scale of offshore wind parks for Denmark and invites to reconsider the technological and institutional choices made. Based on a continuous resourceeconomic model operating in a geographical information systems (GIS) environment, which describes resources, costs and area constraints in a spatially explicit way, the relation between project size, location, costs and ownership is analysed. Two scenarios are presented, which describe a state-of-the-art development as well as a sketch of smaller, locally owned parks that may have several economic advantages but require a greater planning and acceptance because of higher visual impact and area competition.

Local ownership, smart energy systems and better wind power economy

“…This results in high PSO payments, as shown in Table 2 above. While organisations such as the Crown Estate [17] foresee a 35% reduction in costs by 2020 (down to 11 eurocent) and the Fraunhofer ISE [18] counts on a cost reduction of 20% for the same period, the current trend leads to ever-increasing offshore costs [19]. One of the great uncertainties, however, is the expected profit rate of offshore, which is exceeding 20% in the UK, while public ownership is associated with much lower profit demands.…”

Options to mitigate utility-scale wind turbine impacts on defence capability, air supremacy, and missile detection

“…Like conventional energy systems, long term policies are a fundamental requirement for sound renewable energy investments that integrate well with existing infrastructure and regulations [11][12][13][14][15][16], and as wind power capacity is rapidly expanding it is fast approaching technical and institutional impediments [10,17].…”

“…Beyond radar interference, Dougherty [9] identifies obstruction and safety as additional concerns the DOD have related to wind turbines, and Möller et al [10] notes, the expansion of wind farms into new locations requires an unprecedented level of planning to cater for the growing scale and range of technological and institutional considerations. Like conventional energy systems, long term policies are a fundamental requirement for sound renewable energy investments that integrate well with existing infrastructure and regulations [11][12][13][14][15][16], and as wind power capacity is rapidly expanding it is fast approaching technical and institutional impediments [10,17].…”

Greening offshore wind with the Smart Wind Chart evaluation tool

“…During recent years, due to its flexibility and available features, this spatial analysis tool has been extensively used by renewable energy developers in the context of multi-criteria decision analysis for OWF site selection procedure (see, for example, Atici et al, 2015). Moreover, there are recent studies evaluating OWE development through GIS tools, but only at a national level; for instance, there are assessment studies for Denmark (Möller et al, 2012), Greece (Vagiona and Karanikolas, 2012), Portugal (Costa et al, 2006), and the UK (Cavazzi and Dutton, 2016). Although there are numerous studies proposing multicriteria approaches for wind farm siting (mainly onshore), an integrated approach combining the aforementioned viewpoints with evaluation procedures is still missing for offshore wind applications with reference to an extended spatial scale, such as a large basin.…”