Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
According to yourselft, the platform's energy consumption is about 30MW:
Power Produced - 5 mega watts for each turbine, giving a total of 10 mega watts for the Demonstrator Project.
This is enough power to provide about one third of the electricity need to operate Talisman's Beatrice platform.


Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jul 15th, 2007 at 03:12:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Yes that's the source of my 3*10=30MW. But I suspect it's more since I believe 10 MW reported is peak (as the convention is for wind projects IIRC what Jerome said).

Also please replace "750 000 tons per day" to "per year" (on the 1975-2001 period) in my post, the ratio "7" is valid though.

by Laurent GUERBY on Sun Jul 15th, 2007 at 03:31:23 PM EST
[ Parent ]
have 40-50% availability, so an offshore MW produces half as much MWh as a base load generator (nuclear or coal or gas) as opposed to a third or a quarter for onshore wind.

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Sun Jul 15th, 2007 at 03:36:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Just a bit of clarification, you're referring to capacity factor, not availability.  Availability is the amount of time a wind turbine is available to operate, completely independent of whether the wind is blowing or not.    Current wind turbines aim for availability factors of up to 97%, and rarely reach that, though are often above 92% and higher.  Newer turbines usually struggle to reach 95%, and availability is often a function of how much extra service attention a machine gets.

Capacity factor is the percentage of full load achieved over X time, usually a year.  No plant, including base load, achieves 100% capacity factor, in fact, many base loads are in the 70's (though some reach in the 90's).  Nuclear power, for example, often produces capacity factors of 100% while they're operating, but of course like any plant, 0% while they're shut down.  In fact, in the US, nuclear power capacity factors have just reached fractions above 90% in two years since the early 70's, and did not reach above 80% until 1999.  (EIA)

According to the Nuclear Energy Institute, the average capacity factor in 2006 was 89.9%, compared to coal at 71.1% and nat gas ranging from 17.2% to 39.9%.  (This is because coal plants need significant maintenance downtime, while natgas is burned primarily in peakers.)

No question offshore has higher potential capacity factors than on land, because the wind is both stronger and more consistent.  What's also most advantageous about offshore is the lower turbulence intensity. (TI is a wind turbine's enemy number one.)  This is because there's nothing to increase surface roughness for thousands of kilometers, except waves and more waves.  On land turbulence is increased because of terrain changes like hills and valleys, and buildings and bridges, and cell phone towers and carnival rides, and the odd wind turbine here and there.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin

by Crazy Horse on Sat Jul 21st, 2007 at 04:42:45 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Oh, wait, are these nominal? Then 10 MW (nominal) = 4MW (effective) and Beatrice consumes 12 MW.

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Sun Jul 15th, 2007 at 03:40:02 PM EST
[ Parent ]
What I want to know is, what do they use all that electricity for?  Pumps?
by NHlib on Mon Jul 16th, 2007 at 12:57:39 PM EST
[ Parent ]
gas compressors are even bigger energy hogs.  You either have to push the gas back into the field or pump it off to market.  but pumps are serious users as well.  There's often other processing equipment as well.
by HiD on Tue Jul 17th, 2007 at 03:54:14 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:

Occasional Series