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:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-difference-cfd-allocation-round-6-core-parameters

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: