Dong Energy has announced that Hornsea Project Three, an offshore wind farm that could power over two million UK homes when built, has entered the consultation stage of its planning process.
Situated about 120km off the Yorkshire coast, Hornsea Three is set to be the world’s biggest offshore wind project when completed, with a maximum capacity of 2.4GW. The 696 square kilometre site lies to the east of Hornsea One and Two, which will also be built by Danish state-backed energy utility Dong.
“Hornsea Project Three is a huge infrastructure project which, if built out to full capacity, would be the world’s largest offshore wind farm and potentially twice the size of Hornsea Project One,” said Brent Cheshire, DONG Energy UK’s country chairman.
“Moving forward with consultation for Hornsea Project Three really underlines our commitment to the UK offshore wind industry. We have already invested around £5bn in the UK on offshore wind and we have a number of important future projects under construction and in our pipeline.”
Dong Energy recently announced that it has taken a final investment decision to build the 1.2GW Hornsea Project One, which will be capable of powering over one million UK homes. Expected to be completed in 2020, it is set to become the world’s largest offshore wind farm when it becomes operational, but will be surpassed by Project Three when it comes online later in the decade.
Hornsea Project One is one of three Dong Energy offshore wind farms granted a Final Investment Decision Enabling contract (Contract for Difference) by the UK Government in April 2014. It will consist of 7MW wind turbines, each more than 190m high. Dong has previously stated that the turbines will be built at a Siemens-owned factory in Hull.
The money must be good.
Happy to know old age pensioners and the poorest in society, living in the worst houses, with the worst insulation and of lowest efficiency will be subsidising this for the benefit of the wealthy and eco-warriors alike.
“money must be good”..indeed prospectively pound per unit as £3/W facility x3 exploitability x3 availability x3 utilisability ironically with carbon cost exceeding redeemability. DT Swifthook will be smiling at success of his career campaign whilst MW Thompson will be in despair at demise of his own for nuclear.
The government needs to invest in electricity production and it should also help and encourage the insulating of housing stock. The present government is rowing back on the progress made by the previous one – see the delay on the Swansea Bay Tidal project.
You can criticise individual projects if you have a rational reason for doing so. However, criticising investment in a project which will provide energy over the long term and where the fuel is free merely because ‘eco-warriors’ are in favour is plain silly.
It is plain silly that the poorest, the most vulnerable and those without means to improve their energy context effectively subsidise wind power in order to satisfy the eco-political lobbyists.
Moreover, until mass energy storage is available, such intermittent power sources are vanity projects for people who are only too willing to spend other people’s money.
Sustainability is the management of social, economic and environmental well being. Considering these installations’ long term costs and given the existing funding formula where the poorest pay disproportionately more than others: then it seems clear to me that on a sustainability analysis they fail.
This objection is reasoned and principled. It is based on the needs and well being of the poorest in society; the engineering challenges posed by large scale wind and recognises that Britain’s financial deficit still exists, our debt is growing and our economic stability is imperilled by spending money unwisely.
This is a complex issue, which has been made all the more difficult by vociferous eco-warriors pressurising the government to make decisions that are frankly unsustainable.
May I point out that oil is free. But like wind it requires infrastructure and processing to make it usable and deliver it to our homes. The cost of the raw energy source is only a small part of the equation.
It’s a bit insulting to imply that poore and vulnerable people are too stupid to understand the huge Ecological advantage if wind power. We’ve been subsidising fossil fuels for decades and ended up with an excess co2 problem.
By investing in wind we are guaranteed a variable and relatively cheap supply within a few years. Contrast Nuclear which is looking un-financible, takes years to build and waste an open ended waste management commitment.
The only reason that the Danes are investing in this is that it is guaranteed subsidy, so Nath is quite right. They are scrapping many of their windmills as the grid cannot use them effectively: we should be doing the same, if we had not guaranteed paying subsidies, even for not generating unusable power.
The economic answer would be to pay-off any dues and scrap all subsidies for so-called proven technology.
There is a significant amount of information that suggests that many types of power generation receive substantial government subsidies.
Here is one source:
https://www.odi.org/publications/10058-empty-promises-g20-subsidies-oil-gas-and-coal-production
Excellent! This follows another significant investment in on-shore wind in Iowa with a capacity of 2 GW.
https://www.midamericanenergy.com/news.aspx
Not driven by eco-warriors or whatever name calling one can come up with. Not that there is anything wrong with people who demand sustainable solutions to our energy system, which currently is destroying the livability of our planet.
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html
Iowa is going 100% renewable for all the best and most rational reasons. Good for them and goo for us!
Can the whole world go 100% renewable? Yes, it has to and here’s the plan:
http://thesolutionsproject.org/
Why that will need to go renewable? If, for some strange reason, you want to limit the emissions of carbon dioxide – a gas that has brought to agricultural benefits – then nuclear power produces low-cost electricity continuously and reliably and with minimum environmental impact.
Wind is hugely expensive, maintenance intensive, intermittent, unreliable and, during peak demand periods it is usually absent. I am amazed that anyone can be ignorant enough to imagine that wind and solar power can keep the lights on.
This is all a cover up by the government who have known for more than 10 years that the UK were going to face energy shortages around 2016. They have extended the lives of outdated and past their sell by date nuclear facilities and are encouraging wind and solar energy to ensure that the lights don’t go out for us all in the UK. At one level this is laudable, on another it’s appalling that no government has the guts to say openly whats going on as it would cost them too many votes. When will the UK government do what’s best for the UK rather than whats best for the political party in power at the time. This stupidity is putting our future at risk.
Some points for John to consider:
1. Refurbishment and life extension of power plants is good economics and is currently underway in France and the USA.
2. Solar and wind do not guarantee power: they provide unreliable intermittent power that the rest of the power system has to cope with.
3. The governmental support, i.e. subsidy of wind and solar has totally distorted energy economics in the UK and might well cause power brown-outs this year.
I certainly agree that their stupidity is putting the UK’s future at risk.
I agree that we need to stop all subsidies for mature, proven technology. Let’s start with the absurdly high strike price for Hinkley C!
Renewable energy costs are coming down and storage solutions are being developed at a far faster pace than ever before. Let the market decide, not politics or outdated, inaccurate opinions.