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A comment on Offshore Wind Farm to Power More Than One Million U.K. Homes.

Re:Offshore Wind Farm to Power More Than One Million U.K. Homes by barney54 on Wednesday February 03, 2016 @10:49PM (#11031863)
The title of the WSJ article is misleading. An offshore wind farm does not power more than 1 million homes, unless you only want electricity when the wind is blowing.

Offshore wind is one of the most expensive sources of electricity generation--more expensive than every except solar thermal. https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/electricity_generation.cfm Offshore wind is more than twice as expensive as onshore wind.

The fact that the U.K. is pushing offshore wind is one reason why the U.K's electricity rates are much higher than in the U.S. The U.K.'s electricity rates about about $0.22 per kwh [1] compared to an average of $0.13 in the U.S. [2]

[1]http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/... [2] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf...

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Re:Offshore Wind Farm to Power More Than One Million U.K. Homes by ascorbic on Thursday February 04, 2016 @03:25AM (#11032682)
There are only two reasons to have offshore wind power. One is because NIMBYs make it hard to erect onshore turbines. The other reason is that it really pisses off Donald Trump. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shet...
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Re:Offshore Wind Farm to Power More Than One Million U.K. Homes by macmac on Thursday February 04, 2016 @02:02AM (#11032470)
The numbers you cite for Offshore wind are US numbers and completely useless as there are no permanent offshore wind farms in the US and only two under construction/planning. The picture for UK/NL/GE/BL etc is very different. The estimated LCOE for recent DK tenders (eg Horns Rev 3) are estimated at 80-90 USD/mwh.
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Re:Offshore Wind Farm to Power More Than One Million U.K. Homes by madaxe_again on Thursday February 04, 2016 @02:18PM (#11036417)
Actually, it does, if you're using a chunk of your wind time power to pump water up a mountain for hydro storage generators, as happens here. it's almost always windy off the UK coast - most wind power is concentrated off north Wales, which is no coincidence, as snowdonia has several large capacity pumped storage systems.
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Re:Offshore Wind Farm to Power More Than One Million U.K. Homes by armenarmen on Thursday February 04, 2016 @03:59AM (#11032767)
The reason that the US has cheap electricity is that our natural gas is incredibly inexpensive. That being said, yeah offshore wind power is very expensive, and probably not the best choice.
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Re:Offshore Wind Farm to Power More Than One Million U.K. Homes by arm85 on Thursday February 04, 2016 @08:51AM (#11033831)
Offshore wind power is also cheaper than tidal generators. Neither of your sources show that the reason our electricity rates are higher than the US rates, is due to offshore wind.
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