By Julian Singer While most of us were enjoying a few days of sun in the middle of last week, the electricity grid controllers in Wokingham were sweating with anxiety. The same weather conditions that had brought the sun also brought very still conditions. Wind power output dropped to near zero, after been well below [...]
By Barney Smith The Prime Minister’s ten-point blue-print for a “Green Industrial Revolution”, released in November 2020, included the following extract (from Point 1), which also incidentally contains the firmest commitment in the whole plan viz:- “And by 2030, we aim to produce 40GW of offshore wind, including 1GW of innovative floating offshore wind in [...]
By Julian Singer GWEC India presented its annual report on the Indian wind market on 10 June 2021. India is ranked 4th in terms of world wind power capacity, with 39.2GW installed as of March 2021, all onshore. This, however, is far from the current goal of reaching 450GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030, [...]
By Julian Singer The UK’s drive to reach net zero emissions depends hugely on affordable offshore wind energy. In the most recent auction of Contacts for Difference (CfD) in September 2019 the strike prices of the successful bids were around £40 per megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity, well below the government’s guideline price for wholesale electricity [...]
By Julian Singer The UK may have the largest offshore wind capacity in the world, but little of it is operated by UK companies. It is well known that most of the equipment and technology for wind farms comes from non-UK firms. What may be less well known is that, according to the Crown Estate, [...]
By Barney Smith Thursday 25 March 2021 saw the release of the sixteenth annual report by the Global World Energy Council (GWEC) . The title “Wind Energy’s role on the road to Net Zero” shows that Climate Change is back on the agenda, and the report also notes the trend for countries to announce net [...]
By Julian Singer As discussed in theGreenbarrel article of January 14, the recent government energy white paper restates the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan of reaching an offshore wind capacity of 40GW by 2030. What is the chance of achieving this? There are many steps in constructing an offshore wind farm. The process starts with the Crown [...]
By Julian Singer Floating offshore wind turbines are starting to receive a lot of publicity, but people have been working on them for some time. According to the Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) small-scale tests were being performed in the 1990’s. They have much in common with offshore oil field platforms, so it is not [...]
By Julian Singer During the 2020 monsoon the power output from India’s wind turbines was reported to be 30 to 40 per cent below that expected[1]. This is important because seventy per cent of India’s annual wind power is normally generated during this season, which runs from June to September. It is also surprising because [...]
By Julian Singer As discussed in a previous article (Greenbarrel, 13 October), the Prime Minister’s recent commitment to offshore wind has been welcomed by a wide range of business and environmental leaders, albeit with comments as to how the target will be achieved. Perhaps inevitably given the PM’s preference for dreams, some of the claims [...]