Britain approves world's biggest offshore wind farm - Reuters

[Eugene]

Britain approves world's biggest offshore wind farm
18 Dec 2006 14:16:44 GMT
Source: Reuters

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON, Dec 18 (Reuters) - Britain gave a green light on Monday for the world's
biggest offshore wind farm, hoping it will help curb greenhouse gases and global
warming.

The 341-turbine London Array, along with the smaller 100-turbine Thanet wind farm
which was also approved, will supply 1.3 gigawatts of electricity -- enough to power
one million homes.

"This announcement will be the first of a number of large-scale offshore wind farms
in the UK," said Environment Minister David Miliband.

Thanet should come on stream in 2008 with the London Array about two years later.
Both are off the south coast of England.

-snip-

Full article: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L18768034.htm

Also:
Map of London Array project - BBC
Offshore wind farms get go-ahead - BBC

[rollopollo]

1. Very impressed and a little surprised

...with how fast wind power is growing. I read that wind power is up to 58,000 megawatts. That is significant. Scientific American claimed that wind power was the most promising of all renewable energy sources, and the one to make the first major impact. Apparently, in CO, people can choose to buy electricity generated from wind power, and it is even slightly cheaper than coal-based power.

[NNadir]

2. 1.3 Gigawatts?

It appears that wind stations south of Scotland produce their name plate capacity for about 25% of the time. Some do worse, but that seems like a reasonable figure. (In Scotland they go over 30%.)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x75583

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/09/nwind09.xml

It may be that there are few times that the output reaches the rated capacity, but these are balanced by time when no power at all is available.

If we assume that these plants will operate at the same 25% capacity the plants in Cumbria operate, even if they are on the other side of the island, they will really produce energy equivalent to a 0.32 gigawatt or 320 MW gas plant. The actual energy benefit may be smaller depending on British policies for the maintainence of "spinning reserve."