Friday, January 8
New Isle of Wight offshore wind farm
Good news today about the 3rd round UK offshore wind farm plans. One of the wind farms will be just South of the Isle of Wight and along the Dorset coast. Although not the biggest 3rd round planned wind farm, it will still have the capacity of about 1 typical coal or nuclear power station, about 0.9 gigawatts. By the time work gets under way, it is likely the larger 5 to 10 megawatt turbines should be more common, requiring fewer turbines in total. We'll have to see.
The 3rd round wind farm projects will be the biggest increase in generation capacity the UK has seen since the end of World War Two. Some 32 gigawatts built in about 4 years. If the 1st and 2nd round projects are included, there will be over 40 gigawatts of offshore capacity installed.
An additional issue is that Siemens are currently looking to locate a new turbine factory in Europe. Hopefully, confirmation of the third round contracts will persuade them to locate it in the UK.
It is likely that towards the end of the decade, we should also see a number of tidal turbine farms constructed as well. Although providing less capacity, the tidal turbines should provide more engineering jobs for home grown UK companies.
2 comments:
That is good news! Just a same they've closed the IoW factory down!!! :-S
Danners
The factory in Scotland that Vestas abandoned, is expanding to build towers for the offshore market:
http://www.newenergyfocus.com/do/ecco/view_item?listid=1&listcatid=32&listitemid=3448§ion=Wind
My take on Vestas is that they pulled out of the IOW because they were determined to. It was nothing to do with the UK market, they just decided to pull out, no matter what.
Siemens are looking to set up a new factory in Europe. Lets hope they choose the UK.
The scary thing is that 30% of the UK energy work force is due to retire in the next 10 years. We are going to have some serious energy problems unless we can get more youths taking up science and engineering.
Post a Comment