UK Wind Powers
In a previous article (see here) I gave a simple overview of wind turbines and how they deliver a substantial portion of electricity generated in the UK.
There are approximately 11,000 operational turbines within the UK (offshore and onshore as at September 2020), with the vast majority (93%) having single turbines with a generating less than 5MW. Scotland hosts about 41% of these operational turbines most of which are onshore and smaller capacity wind turbines. Northern Ireland is the only one of the 4 nations with no operational offshore wind turbines at this point in time.
Of the 4 nations, Scotland hosts both the largest operational offshore and onshore wind turbines at Aberdeen Bay and Sanquhar (which delivers about 50% of Nestle UK and Ireland energy requirements).
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Figure 1 - Sanquhar?Community Wind Farm in Dumfries and Galloway
UK as an offshore wind power
For all the demonisation of the USA as a fossil fuel power, it is the largest producer of #electricity from #wind amongst OECD countries, generating 303 TWh in 2019. It was trailed by Germany at 126 TWh and the UK in 3rd place at 64 TWh. Where the UK shines as a wind power nation relates to operational offshore wind capacity, where it has the largest offshore wind installed capacity (within the OECD) by a commanding margin (about 45% as at 2018).
Pro's of offshore wind turbines installation include a higher load factor (the actual output of a turbine benchmarked against its theoretical maximum output in a year) compared to onshore wind. The offshore wind turbine load factor circa 39% is about 50% greater than for onshore wind (27%) and is expected to increase in the coming years. Less opposition to construction / operation and red tape and potential to install truly massive wind turbines with higher generation capacity.
Wind Turbine Issues
The CEO of BP recently announced (2020) ambitious plans to generate returns of 8 - 10% from renewable energy as compared to the 15% -ish returns historically targeted from oil and gas operations. To generate these sort of consistent returns from power generation from wind turbines would require high reliability of the turbines (especially for offshore sites). This brings me to operational issues:
The EU sponsored ReliaWind reliability study of 350 variable speed, pitch regulated wind turbines > 850KW showed that highest component failure rates were experienced by the pitch system and frequency converters. These components, which are part of the rotor and power module respectively gave rise to the highest turbine lost time incidents.
The power and rotor module together contributed to about 50% of the overall recorded failure rates.
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Figure 2 - Normalised failure rate of sub-systems and assemblies for turbines (ReliaWind)
Figure 3 - Normalised hours lost per turbine per year to faults in sub-systems and assemblies for turbines (ReliaWind)
The yaw system, generator assembly followed by the gearbox assembly were also components with correspondingly high reliability issues.
The frequency converter, generator assembly and pitch system (from the power and rotor modules) were the 3 components leading to the longest periods of downtime.
The impact of environmental loads (induced by anomalies in the wind field) on the components and the structure of wind turbines, especially on the rotor blades, is a key issue.
These known issues are being improved upon with improved component design as reliability is key to maintain uptime of wind turbines, reduce losses due to equipment failure and excessive call-outs.
This article was originally written in September 2020 and was also published here, where we help your company become more sustainable, adaptable and profitable - https://www.flowassured.com/blog-post/uk-wind-powers.
References:
Renewables Information Overview 2020 - IEA
Measuring Wind Turbine Reliability - Results of the Reliawind Project - Michael Wilkinson et. al
Lead Process Engineer at Birwelco ltd
3 年Very interesting
Energy and Projects
3 年Hmmm, what are my thoughts? I think the likely big impacts are during the construction / installation phase especially regarding dredging / pile driving and cable lay with the potential to disrupt benthic ecology and marine environments with potentially smaller impacts during the operations phase with noise pollution within the marine environment and disruption to birds. On the other hand, it could be a boon to marine life with new marine growth forming around the base of the turbines forming new marine communities as seen around pipelines and platforms. As per chemical discharges, I'd expect these to be mitigated with the competent authorities ensuring minimal to no discharge to sea. Floating offshore wind may mitigate this further but it's still nascent... I'd also expect less damaging construction/installation methods as the industry matures and gets more exposure...
Flow Assurance Engineer | Petroleum Engineer | Operations Engineer | R&D Specialist | Innovator and Problem Solver | ERASMUS+ Scholar (AFMIChemE, AMEI, AMRSC, MIET, MSPE, SMIMarEST)
3 年Any thoughts on the environmental concerns about offshore wind turbines?
The article does well to cover some statistics on the current state of wind power. While the article addresses the operational issues itself, seasonal effects, especially the winter can also be covered. Just imagine, once peak winter hits, those wind turbines are going to be frozen dead solid for some poor bloke to spray hit it with steam to thaw the ice!! But isn’t it strange that… When the proponents of renewables are beating their drum that climate change is an issue, then HOW can they make the choice of renewables which depend on the “same uncertain climate & weather” to generate electricity!! ???? On that note, Solar energy seems to be the lesser of the 2 evils, because atleast it does not have any moving parts!! ????
Machinery Engineer at ExxonMobil
3 年Interesting read. This article buttresses the point that the reliability of any equipment is defined by the reliability of its weakest component hence the need for redundancy in design, especially for the offshore wind turbines where intervention cost is typically higher than in the onshore case.