Daily Mail Eulogise About Floating Wind Power–But Forget About The Cost
By Paul Homewood
An incredibly naive article in the Mail:
The secret to unlocking Britain’s clean energy future might be found in giant floating wind farms.
These enormous floating structures can reach up to 240 metres (787ft) in height – around the same size as a skyscraper.
And experts predict they could make up 10 per cent of the UK’s wind farms by 2030.
However, building an enormous tower designed to sit in high winds poses some significant engineering issues.
From ‘spars’ that bob like fishing lures to cutting-edge hybrid platforms, engineers have created hundreds of different designs for these clean-energy giants.
Currently, most wind turbines that you see are ‘fixed’ turbines, meaning they have been drilled into the sea floor.
This method is very effective at ensuring the turbine can resist the strong winds it is meant to harness, but isn’t always the best option.
Dr Emma Edwards, an engineer at University of Oxford who develops floating platforms, told MailOnline that fixed turbines can’t be used in the windiest areas.
She explained: ‘The wind is much stronger and more reliable in deep water. 80 per cent of global wind capacity is located in water depths that are too deep for fixed platforms.’
Since it would be too expensive, or simply impossible, to drill into the seabed, the better solution is for turbines to float above it.
The challenge for engineers is to design a floating platform that can keep a 240m-tall tower from swaying too much in extremely strong winds.
While Dr Edwards says there are hundreds of different unique designs, these broadly fit into six different categories.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13235229/floating-windfarms-britain-clean-energy.html
The article goes on to show how the various options might work. But nowhere is there any mention of cost.
The Administrative Strike Price for this year’s CfD auction lists floating wind at 176/MWh, at 2012 prices. At current prices, this works out at £241/MWh, which is more than double ordinary offshore wind, and three times as much as CCGT power:
As we so often see with these sort of stories, the wide eyed reporter is fresh out of Uni. He has only had a full time job since July 2022, and a year writing about nursing apparently qualifies him to be a Science & Technology Reporter:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wiliam-hunter-media/?originalSubdomain=uk
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Where’s the Editor?
Like many of the pro zero carbon reporters, this poor chap has probably realised that if he wants a well paid job in this sector, he has no option but to join the zero carbon band wagon/gravy train.
If he decided to fight a lone battle to tell people the real facts, he would still be out of work. Recently the BBC took on 9 new climate change reporters- they would have labelled anyone opposing their brainwashing drivel as a denier which means that if you want a job these days you have little option but to toe the line.
I agree that many blue collar workers and anyone else whose jobs are being destroyed by the high energy costs caused by the drive to net zero, will have a different view than the youngsters who support the net zero. Everything you read or hear is designed to promote the net zero message and there is very little written to provide the general public with a more balanced view.
We must do all we can do to spread the ‘Not a lot of People Know That’ facts and figures to all our friends and hope that some of them will start opposing the zero carbon impositions. We can only hope that in time, as more and more people are affected by the destruction of industry and the imposition of higher energy costs and the heating and electric car fiasco, they will let their feelings be known and refuse to play ball. I do think that most drivers realise that swapping all the cars to electric is just a ridiculous pipe dream that has absolutely no chance of success. I guess that’s a start- the reality of it all is beginning to bite already as it is only the very wealthy who can even think about solar panels, heat pumps and electric cars, all of which are completely out of reach of most ordinary people.
It’s also covered here:
Starmer confirms floating offshore wind will be GB Energy’s ‘priority’ (msn.com)
The Tories’ critique is half-hearted, not least because they’re stuck in a similar rut.
Because no actual investors will touch it, so Labour will “invest” and then sell at far below cost. That will allow then to claim they’ve lowered bills and invested for the future.
As I said yesterday, you can’t blame the reporter- he’s just out of University and realises that the new multi- trillion dollar climate change industry is the place to be and when the Telegraph gave him the job he probably thought he’d won the lottery. The fault lies with the Telegraph and the BBC and the Met Office and the Universities who are all receiving millions of pounds to promote the Net Zero message.
The universities are indoctrinating a whole new generation of students to believe that the world as we know it will be destroyed if we continue to use fossil fuels. All these places have unbelievably massive budgets to promote the Net Zero message and anyone that opposes them is likely to be kicked out or at least completely ostracised. Try talking to young people and you will soon realise they are all listening to and believing the messages they are receiving, hence the fact that pressure groups like Extinction Rebellion are finding it so easy to attract new members.
They have been conditioned to believe everything they are being told. I believe we need to expose just how much money all these organisations are receiving and, more importantly, who is giving it to them. We also need to promote the consequences of all this, ie the destruction of the Western world as we know it to the point where we are now totally reliant on countries like China for almost everything we buy and that our energy security will eventually become non existent. It’s important that we send official letters of complaint whenever and wherever the zero carbon drivel is factually incorrect- it’s no goood merely sending a note as it will not be published and will go straight into the bin!
Or even the Mail.
“Try talking to young people” Actually I have to disagree with your view. I do speak to a lot of young people from ALL backgrounds. Talk to a young trades person, manual worker or general “blue collar” worker and you will actually find they all agree that this climate emergency is BS.
If you just inhabit the smaller circle highlighted by certain media outlets you only hear the eco nutjobs but in reality they are a small, but vocal, minority.
The silent majority will soon speak up. As they say, do not believe all you read in the papers.
He has an MA in Newspaper Journalism and a BA in Philosophy.
His skills are Feature writing, Research, Copy Editing, Microsoft Excel, Podcasting and Investigative Reporting.
So ideally qualified to write articles like this one.
Copy editing? Seems like much copying, which doesn’t require brain power, and not much editing, which should.
Further progress away from reality. Speak to naval architects about how to get a stable floating platform in a 4Oft swell. The oil and gas engineers can just about manage it but they do not have to allow for a 200ft tower and a turbine oscillating and swaying in a gale. Nothing is rigid or it will break.
Has a trial of this actually been conducted or are they relying on modelling again?
Hywind Scotland to shut down for months due to extensive maintenance work
Iberdrola cancels ‘Flagship’ floating offshore wind pilot
May 2023: Equinor reports that it is postponing Trollvind indefinitely. It has informed the authorities, and as reasons has cited technology availability, rising cost and a strained timetable to deliver on the original concept. Equinor has previously announced reduced activity in the project due to technical, regulatory, and commercial challenges to the project.
September 2023:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-66748924
“Plans for Wales’ first floating wind farm will be delayed by one year as UK government funding is too low, the firm behind the plans says.
Blue Gem Wind did not bid for a UK government contract, a decision which industry voices said was a “huge wake-up call” for Westminster.”
Give us more money (a lot) and we might do something…
From what I’ve seen both Lusitania and Queen Mary where badly affected by rogue waves. The Queen Mary had stabilisers retro-fitted because of rolling problems.
Perhaps they should mount the turbines and wave machines onto a bed of giant shock absorbers, which itself is anchored to the sea bed. [Also looked at: https://www.windpowerengineering.com/comparing-offshore-wind-turbine-foundations/]. You can easily imagine how long a car without suspension would last.
A really big storm (due to climate change) will blow them over and then what, a 400,000 Volt floating substation is going to be a sight to see, when it flashes over.
It is too big a risk to go down this route!
Gone fishin’…
My MP Selaine Saxby is chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group for the Celtic Sea. I presume she is aware of the upcoming costs and inevitable proposed disruption caused when these transmission cables hit the shore at Saunton Sands. Right behind is the UNESCO Designated Biosphere Reserve of Braunton Burrows which is a privately owned site. Could get interesting me thinks.
She’ll be in a dilemma then, won’t she? She’s a member of CEN and always spouting some nonsense or other, but this might affect part of her constituency, so she has to decide which way to jump. What does electoral calculus say about her seat? That might help clarify her position.
Since floating wind turbines were first mooted, I described tham as massive and expensive white elephants. I have seen nothing to make me change my mind – on the contrary, I am more convinced they will be a disaster.
I wonder what prompted this child to produce this article? Has there been a press release as this would be praising the idea while of course failing to identify all the drawbacks that render the idea redundant? You wouldn’t expect today’s legacy media to actually investigate this properly especially as so much of it is far left anyway.
Keir Starmer visited a floating wind farm manufacturer here
I suspect this journo is an infiltrating lefty activist…..no I am not joking!
But this is completely unnecessary. I presume you have viewedwww.climatethemovie.netwhich eviscerates the who
Further thoughts: where is the Office for Budget Responsibility and is it staffed by people who are capable of a realistic assessment of the merits of any scheme which the govt. proposes to fund wholly or partially?
The rot starts there. Wrong people in the wrong job. Almost the UK version of pork barrel politics. Beneficiaries not necessarily the voting public but big business and corporate opportunism.
No, the OBR are completely useless. Witness their childish claims that Brexit somehow stopped us growing 2-3 times faster than Germany and France since 2016. Oh but our model, they say.
Not worth 1p if you don’t sense-checks the outputs.
I asked one of the four engineers who had worked at the Riso “research” institution in Denmark what the main problem was with windmills. He said “bearings” … indeed he told me about their “research” (it took a while to explain and for him to find an answer). Their “research” was going to local scrap dealers to find out which lorry gear boxes to use. He also confirmed this “research” institution was in a spare part of the nuclear research institution, in a unit rumoured to be contaminated with radioactivity.
Likewise, I found the key element to wave power, was yet again something very simple: the anchorage. Almost all wave devices “worked” for a few weeks and then broke free because it was nigh on impossible to get a suitable anchor.
Wind “power” is just going to have the same problems. Almost certainly the anchors will break.
Why do anchors break … because the device is intended to extract forward momentum of wave/wind and to do that there has to be an equal and opposite force. But, due to waves, that force on the anchor varies massively and it isn’t directly back, but upward and so it tends to lift up any but the most massive anchors. Yes … you could grout into rock, but any shallow bit of the sea is sand and silt … which doesn’t hold an anchor well.
I’d just like to add … I’ve discovered the key element to charging a phone … is turning the charger on … half hour coffee break follows.
Has the media entered into competition for who can make up the wackiest climate change story. Today the BBC ran this advertisement (oops sorry “in depth article”) for Shepherd Neame and Ramsgate Brewery.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-68636451
Apparently the new “drought” conditions in Kent (what happened to all the flooding climate change is supposed to bring?) are affecting hops. Shame the BBC can’t be bothered to check the Met Office time series on rainfall in England which show zero trend in summer rainfall….a dead flat line.
Perhaps they should have consulted T.S.Elliot – when he lived in Margate and was writing “The Waste Land” the annual rainfall there was under 10 inches for the entire year back in the 1930s.
Floating windfarms – how do they provide a reliable connection to consumers on shore? If anchors won’t hold then connection to undersea cables won’t either. It is a monumentally silly idea – having sailed on the North Sea in a storm, it is somewhere where you don’t willingly wish to be!
I suppose if people were a little bit naughty they could help them break free and tow them to wherever they wanted, IF they were any good.
I’d have thought gyroscopic forces would make mincemeat of one of these.
Dr Emma Edwards, an engineer at University of Oxford who develops floating platforms,
The word “develops” does not mean what it sounds like. Dr Emma is well trained for studying wind thingys and water, but one needs a gazillion dollars and a big company to develop a massive subsidy harvester. Smart lawyers will also be in the skill set of the team.
A lot of naysayers with good points, but that was also the case with a great deal of offshore drilling and production. We will see whether the challenges can be overcome. I suspect these things will be feasible from a engineering standpoint a long time before they are economically viable.
Another day, Another hare brained scheme, breathlessly reported by the Science and Technology Reporter whose years of experience and training amount to……………..zero, but in that time he has amassed plenty of knowledge and experience- makes my years of work on an Engineering degree, doctorate and work look like a total waste – should have reported on Nursing then progressed…
Floating windmills sound great, but just think of a couple of reasons why they have for years been discounted – the sea is a rough place, waves contain a lot of force which can easily crush manmade structures, now put a 240m/ 787ft – almost 2/3rds the height of The Shard, almost 5x Nelson’s column, in a area where waves can be as much as 20m/ 65ft high, rising and falling, the stability of the structure would make it unviable, never mind that the bulk of the weight – the rotor head would act like a pendulum and very quickly find its tipping point.
The Daily Mail and the rest of the MSM should stick to unicorns, hens teeth and mermaids.
Climate obsessives living on hopium as usual, throwing money at anything that sounds good – to them.
The must have reaching the end of the line regarding what will save NZ.
Wind/Solar/CCS/Hydrogen/EV’s/Tidal/Offshore …
When a wind turbine 1.00 skyscrapers tall falls over, how are they going to get it to stand back up? Can we call it erectile dysfunction?
If ever there was a “Castle in the air” lterally built to face the “Tempest ” these must be the ultimate example.
Who are the “experts” so often referenced or are they just sprites who will vanish, nameless, at the high point of this play?