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Friday Open Thread | 24 comments (24 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)
Wind power (4.00 / 2)
I'm reading that the 60 MW alpha ventus off-shore wind farm generated 268 GWh last year, 15% above plan. If I did my calculations right, that's a capacity factor of 51.0%! A question to the wind experts here: do you have comparative capacity factor numbers on European off-shore wind farms?

BTW, there is a new connection between wind power and train technology beyond motor/generator technology: condition monitoring. Railway company Knorr-Bremse teamed up with SKM to create condition monitoring for train running gear, based on SKM's experience with wind turbine gear condition monitoring.

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.

by DoDo on Fri Apr 26th, 2013 at 03:41:17 PM EST
Re: Wind power (4.00 / 3)
Alpha Ventus is a public/private joint demo project, so its performance is (relatively) public. For almost all of the others, only the stakeholders have access to performance data (and those under a strong NDA).

but yes, that's seriously fine performance two years running. The real question is at what cost for O&M. As we speak, AV is installing  and testing lights, so the extensive (one surmises) O&M needed to achieve such CF can be run 24/7.

From DOTI (EWE, E.on und Vattenfall): "Langfristig ist es dabei unser Ziel, den Serviceaufwand für die Anlagen weiter zu reduzieren. Die Erfahrungen dabei kommen nicht zuletzt auch den Folgeprojekten zugute."

Official PR Here  (Link auf Deutsch, can be directed to english site)

CH translate:  Our long term goal is to reduce the O&M costs for the windpark. This experience will benefit the pipeline (future) projects.

The large rotor multi-MW turbines can not effectively operate without highly sophisticated condition monitoring, or O&M skyrockets. It is certainly gratifying to realize that we made some advances which can now be transferred to other industries.

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

by Crazy Horse on Fri Apr 26th, 2013 at 04:57:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Wind power (4.00 / 2)
I'd add that other recent projects financed by banks are getting nice capacity factors too, and their O&M budgets are under a lot of scrutiny. Now turbine manufacturers can always spend more themselves and not charge the projects, but they seem keen these days to offer fixed price long term O&M contracts, so they must be earning money with what they are being paid now.

Wind power
by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Fri Apr 26th, 2013 at 05:10:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Wind power (4.00 / 6)
40 to 50% is the general expectation, depending on the area (and how conservative you are). German offshore should generally get 50% or more (the Areva 5000 at Alpha Ventus has a relatively small rotor at 116m; they are now selling the same model with a 135m rotor, which should increase the  capacity by several %

We posted the data from Denmark

The two big ones are at 40-45% (Nysted & Horns Rev) with old turbines (orns REn is in the North Sea, Nysted on the Baltic sea side)

Wind power

by Jerome a Paris (etg@eurotrib.com) on Fri Apr 26th, 2013 at 05:08:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Wind power (4.00 / 2)
to be clear, these projects represent some 600 MW of current 5,000 MW, and almost all near shore. Further, all of the turbines are standard onshore turbines upgraded to deal with marine conditions. All installed before the development of true offshore turbine technology. They bear little relation to the majority  of the current 5GW.

to assess performance, we must be able to look at projects installed after 2009, primarily Round 2 UK. These begin to represent the current state of the art.

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

by Crazy Horse on Sat Apr 27th, 2013 at 10:36:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Wind power (none / 1)
CH, do you have any links or can tell where to look? Some folks need to be hit over the head with these numbers
by mustakissa on Sun Apr 28th, 2013 at 06:28:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Wind power (none / 0)
As i said upthread, i believe all of the modern projects hide their performance behind strong NDAs. If there are any which don't, perhaps J is aware of them. Perhaps the grid networks have some aggregate numbers. But i simply don't know, and wish i did.

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anaïs Nin
by Crazy Horse on Sun Apr 28th, 2013 at 07:30:57 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Wind power (none / 0)
The Danish grid operator publishes aggregate data. They will almost certainly be able to provide data for individual wind farms, but whether they want to or not I do not know.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sun Apr 28th, 2013 at 08:35:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Re: Wind power (none / 0)
> If I did my calculations right

Don't know bout that, but somehow I'm getting the same percentage two different ways from the numbers in the press release: from the 4460 hours of full power equivalence, and from the nominal 5*12 MW capacity...

by mustakissa on Sun Apr 28th, 2013 at 09:54:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Friday Open Thread | 24 comments (24 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)
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