World’s first floating wind farm emerges off coast of Scotland–At huge cost to UK electricity users

via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
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By Paul Homewood

h/t Joe Public

Harrabin’s been a busy boy this week!

The world’s first full-scale floating wind farm has started to take shape off the north-east coast of Scotland.

The revolutionary technology will allow wind power to be harvested in waters too deep for the current conventional bottom-standing turbines.

The Peterhead wind farm, known as Hywind, is a trial which will bring power to 20,000 homes.

Manufacturer Statoil says output from the turbines is expected to equal or surpass generation from current ones.

It hopes to cash in on a boom in the technology, especially in Japan and the west coast of the US, where waters are deep.

The Hywind project is being run in collaboration with the Abu Dhabi firm Masdar. The £190m cost was subsidised by bill-payers under the UK government’s Renewable Obligation Certificates.

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Offshore wind farms receive 1.8 ROCs per MWh, and at the current market price of about £45, this works out at £8.5 million a year. With an expected life of 20 years, Hywind’s owners can expect to earn a total of £170 million in subsidies from bill payers, on top of the value of electricity produced.

And all for supplying just 20,000 homes!

Contrast to the Carrington CCGT power station opened last year, which cost £1bn and can supply 1 million homes, with no subsidy at all.

Hywind claim that the cost of future projects may come down. But why on earth are UK bill payers being made to pick up the cost, so that Norwegian Statoil and Abu Dhabi Masdar can eventually sell their technology to Japan and the US?