One of the costs of going offshore is the foundation work. Setting a foundation in water (even shallow) water involves a lot of expense.
Can the foundation be reused, so that you could have a new turbine on the same site without reworking the foundation.
How about the towers?
It seems like the stuff that would have a limited life span would be in the nacelle. Can you switch out nacelles to cut costs on keeping old fields working?
I know that a lot of this is theoretical, since there aren't all that many wind turbines that are old enough to need to be replaced. And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
Onshore there is evidence that towers and foundations can be reused, but still uncertain, depending partly on site conditions. One problem is that new load factors and frequencies change tower dynamics.
I expect an entire recycling industry to evolve, and good sites to stay in service. For offshore it's perhaps too early to understand properly. "Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
Is there going to be a continuing need for new turbines to replace old ones in the field? Are old foundations going to be reused? If that's the case the engineering and construction side is going to fall off massively.
I'm planning to go to the US Social Forum in Detroit this summer, and I think that I may try to see if I can put together a panel of people who can do something on the potential for wind power in the Great Lakes.
One of the other things I've been thinking about is the impact of all these new electric cars coming out on the need for electricity. Let's say that 100,000 Chevy Volts are sold in 2011. With an 8 KW battery that will need to be charged daily, that's 800,000 KwH daily. Nominally, that's 33-34MW of new nameplate capacity needed. Figure that most of that charging will happen during 8 or so hours at night, and it's more like 100 MW nameplate. Figure in downtime and capacity factors (I think that's the word I'm reaching for) and you're talking about a new, decent-sized coal fired plant needed.
But imagine if you could work with utilities to sell people green power for their cars. Like a large up-front payment for a set period like 5 years. You could use it to finance new wind projects. Figure $0.15/ kwh (I'm putting the cost real high.) So that's $1.20 a day, $438/year, $2190 for five years. If you could sell that to even 5% of those new purchasers, that's about $11 million year...... I wonder if something like that could work. hmmm.... And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg
I think you need to talk to Chris Cook - LOL En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
