At last some good news for energy bills?

The world’s largest operating offshore wind farm became fully operational last week. The Hornsea Two wind farm lies 55 miles off the Yorkshire coast and will provide clean energy to 1.3 million homes.

·?????The farm is 4 times the size of Manchester

·?????165 turbines each more than twice the height of Big Ben

·?????Grimsby is the UK’s operational hub for windfarms

·?????Ships go out for 2 weeks at a time to deploy and maintain turbines

·?????Each turbine blade is 81 metres long

·?????1 turn of the turbine will provide enough power for a home for a day or enough for a electric car for 75 miles

·?????Control centre monitors the power output from each turbine individually.

@DuncanClark, Head of UK, #Orsted, who built and will operate the wind farm, says;

We’re now able to build effectively, a massive power generation station out at sea, with all the resources we have in this country for offshore wind, means we can make this accelerated transition deploying these power station scale wind farms one after another at great prices. Wind is one of the lowest cost energy sources we have at this moment.

This is the way to bring the bills down, we need to reduce our reliance on international gas prices. For every unit of electricity we produce from a renewable source is a unit we don’t need to buy off?global fossil fuel markets.

We need to bring forward the convoy of renewable electricity projects and do so as fast as we can.

The need is to get onshore wind farms up and running as well as offshore. Streamline the processes to bring the projects through to fruition, like; Planning, sorting the grid, military radar, other users of the sea etc., and we need to get those processes running smoother.

But what if it’s not windy…? That’s why we design our electricity system to have a mix of electricity sources; different technologies, different sources, on and off at different times, flexible ones like battery storage etc. That’s what enables us to manage the supply and demand of the grid.

@MelanieOnn, #RenewablesUK, says; Big offshore wind projects take a long time to get onstream and perhaps we should look at quicker energy options on land – onshore wind can be producing electricity in a year, but planning process allows for a single person to object to the plans and it will be closed down.

This ‘new’ industry has also provided new jobs for the area of Grimsby which was brought to its needs after the collapse of the fishing industry.

@BBCNews #renewables #energy #grimsby #hornseatwo #orsted #windfarms #offshorewind