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The cost of building offshore wind farms in British waters has fallen by close to a third in the past four years alone, mirroring similar cost savings to be found in other renewable industries like solar. Savings have mostly come from newer technologies allowing for bigger turbines, though increased competition has also helped drive down pricing.
In 2014 when then Prime-Minister David Cameraon nixed offshore wind-farm subsidies, there was some concern that it would lead to stagnation in the industry. However that doesn't appear to have happened at all, with the price per MWh for off shore wind power now dipping below £100 for the first time.
It currently sits at £97 per MWh, which is a 32 per cent drop from this time four years ago, according to the Offshore Wind Programme Board's latest report (via Reuters). This puts the cost close to that of nuclear power.
Source: NHD Info/Flickr
This is doubly impressive since its way ahead of schedule. The initial plan put out by the government was to have offshore wind power cost less than £100 per MWh by 2020. It's thought that this trend will continue in the coming years too, partly thanks to the UK's continued investment in it. It's expected that Britain will invest close to £20 billion in it by 2021.
Announcing his pleasure at the downward trend of offshore wind costs, British energy minister Jesse Norman said in a statement: “Offshore wind will continue to help the UK to meet its climate change commitments, as well as delivering jobs and growth across the country.”
The current British plan is to cut greenhouse emissions by 80 per cent of 1990 levels by 2050.
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KitGuru Says: It's good to see reliable, renewable energy sources like offshore wind continuing to see investment and development. Combined with solar it offers some of the best solutions for powering our country in the future.
Sorta seems like the title of the article doesn’t match the article itself.
Sorta seems like the title of the article doesn’t match the article itself.
Still a staggering waste of money. It is still one of the most expensive ways to generate power and doesn’t even operate 24/7.
True but thats the trouble with green tech the only real way to generate power 24/7 is fossil fuels and nuclear
Excluding hydro due to the lack of sites in the uk for a station
Don’t forget that fossil fuels receive billions in subsidy. The only way to make green energy competitive is to either subsidize neither, or both to an equal degree.
Wind will never be a full replacement, you’ll need solar, water, as well as other green forms. But compared to the trillions we would have to spend if climate change goes haywire (not to mention the global wars and loss of life it will likely lead to), a few billions on a somewhat less efficient means of generating power seems a small price to pay.
We very heavily subsidise fossil fuels, almost every bit of offshore equipment gets a tax exemption and the way it’s working out we won’t get that back when it comes onshore(like it’s supposed to) as we will likely have to foot the bill for decommissioning. Add in all the other infrastructure that was paid for and of course the mitigation for climate variation all on top of enormous profit margins larger than any other industry and it’s actually pretty expensive overall.
The big plus side is that it’s domestic, unlike in the 70s we won’t be entirely over a barrel if there is an issue with supply. Keep in mind during the oil crisis bought and paid for shipments were illegally held offshore until we ponied up more money, and we had no choice. Wind might be intermittent, but vital services have energy storage either through battery/UPS systems or links to hydro schemes that means it’s not a total disaster should we suddenly no longer have access to imported energy.
There are solutions to the intermittent nature of many renewables, there isn’t really a solution for a finite resource being depleted. And unlike fossil fuels which long term will only increase in price as demand outstrips supply, renewable and sustainable fuels and energy sources pretty much stay at constant price.
Good points but they do point to just using nuclear power. You can make an industry out of recycling used rods and easily stockpile enough fuel for a few decades. Plus with the UK not looking at making any UHVDC lines we don’t really have any other choice.
Nuclear when you factor in whole life time costs is actually even more expensive than wind. Wind is actually already fairly cheap and getting cheaper, it’s got very low risks and has a lot of beneficial aspects in terms of the support industry as it needs lots of good technical jobs spread across the whole country(which is why it’s expensive, but that’s money going to workers which is no bad thing).
Nuclear even with recycling has a lot of issues when it comes to decommissioning, even with recycling it’s not perfect and we still don’t have a long term waste storage facility for irradiated materials and radioactive non recyclable fuels. And in operation it’s got a pretty low level of staffing and infrastructure needs by comparison(it’s all in construction, commissioning and decommissioning which is temporary).
Nuclears always something we need as part of the mix, but it would be a big error to rely on it both strategically and economically. And while the UKs pretty recalcitrant in building new transmission infrastructure, offshore winds not that fussy, sure it costs a bit more to link it up to the current grid, but our national grid is creaking and needs extensive upgrades in the next decade or two regardless of what the government may or may not want to do.
Plus energy storage technology is the big thing up in the air, if energy storage cost drops to below nuclear costs per MW/hr then nuclear will face a much stiffer challenge from renewables as suddenly it will be capable of providing reliable base and peaking loads.
Nuclear is only expensive due to it being made in small volumes and NIMBY. The safety features some of the new plants require are absurd and unwarranted in 99% of the planet. You’ve also had bugger all innovation in the field due to nuclear not being in fashion.
Decommissioning wouldn’t be needed if nuclear pants had proper monitoring of their infrastructure like other power plants. This is why many plants in the US have had their lifespan increased as the initial lifespan was a rough guess at part erosion.
Aye, the power grid needs upgrading but it would need top be total redesigned to accommodate such large amounts of varying power sources. Energy storage would help a lot, however if you took the billions spent on R&D for that and applied it to nuclear instead then you would probably end up with a better and faster solution.
Nuclear even if it was on a very large scale would still be expensive, both France and China have had continual development and deployment at large scale and the costs are still high for them even with the benefit of the larger infrastructure and ongoing industry and development. The NIMBY element means your transmission hook ups are more expensive, but generally that’s national grids budget not the operator. In terms of location it can add slightly to the cost, but not that much, generally the NIMBY attitude makes site selection and development harder, but that’s a pretty low total of the cost.
Some of the precautions seem absurd, however it’s a balance of risk, and most accidents have occurred where someone thought a safety precaution was not relevant or over the top. I’ve actually got a little bit of background in decommissioning and worked for one of the main companies that did research into integrity of nuclear reactors and associated plant. From that I would say the precautions are far from OTT, it was only a couple of years ago that two UK plants had to be taken offline because of unexpected deterioration of safety critical components.
It’s often cheaper to life extend than it is to outright decommission, the core elements of the plants are heavily monitored so that makes it far easier to make a safety case for longer operation as the expected lifetime of the parts hasn’t really changed, the difference is the operator knowledge of the parts is massively improved over the lifetime of the plant. And as far as monitoring I know from personal experience that in terms of monitoring there is a worlds of difference between nuclear and conventional plants, the standard is far higher in Nuclear and the applications significantly more advanced. Generally conventional power takes elements of nuclear inspection and monitoring not the other way around. That’s one of the reasons why it’s just so damn expensive, the materials cost is enormous but designing, installing and verifying it’s long term monitoring and inspection is a big part of it.
You can also only offset decom so much, and it often increases your costs as you have higher risks when you eventually do. Removing and disposing of 1000s of tonnes of high and low grade nuclear material is always expensive. A lot of areas after operation aren’t safe for manned entry, that makes it a big challenge, the technology just for cutting and removing irradiated concrete for example is Bond villain level stuff(I used to work in the lab that developed it).
There are some avenues where more R&D could help, but keep in mind Nuclear received enormous amounts of funding after the second world war, and in many respects the decline in funding in some nations was due to diminishing returns. Many nations that did continue funding nuclear haven’t made substantive improvements in all that time. France still uses merely an evolution of the same technology they always have, and Japans experimental reactor programs have failed more often than not.
I doubt it would get a better result, more nuclear power would maintain the status quo, it wouldn’t really make a major change. Energy storage capable of meeting our needs or even reaching parity with energy density and ease of use of hydrocarbons would make an unbelievable difference in our very way of life and radically change how energy is used, it’s cost and it’s availability. Not to mention enable shifts in our current technology that would change significantly the impact of the energy we do consume on the environment.