In this post - we embark on the process for preparing a wind farm, end to end. This will incorporate pre-tender stage factors and supporting studies which impact a wind farm feasibility and design. From there, we will review tendering and tender design, through to concept, asset design, permits and construction. Rounding off the series, we will look briefly at the operations and maintenance side.
Starting Out
It may seem a complex and yes deceptively simple thing to build a wind farm, but as we will see, both for off shore and onshore, there are some key milestones and steps to complete to ensure the potential of the wind is harnessed into a fully built project
Ahead of the constructors jostling for position in a tender, the national body responsible for dividing up wind blocks, opportunities for renewable energy development, must determine its strategy and prepare. This also includes appraising the wind assets they have to enable packaging of wind blocks for bidders with reasonable expectations of wind in those areas. It is unreasonable to expect a power company to generate X amount of GWh / year with an asset with capacity Y GWh / year --> where X >> Y.
To this end, countries undertake wind surveys and simulation work to understand the prevailing wind speeds and the wind rose for an area. This helps form the basis of the block and the 'sticker' rating, that a wind farm needs to be able to produce.
Underpinning this, a country may also undertake a geotechnical survey to characterise the land area under the sea. This helps approximate the difficulty of a construction, the feasibility of a piling operation, or whether a floating wind farm is more appropriate. Depth of water is a key consideration here too.
To this end, the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency has recently awarded a tender to a survey company Fugro to do just this.
Over the next 3 years, the company will deliver geotechnical investigations for proposed offshore wind sites. I covered a map in a recent post where I consider the broad range of offshore wind locations in development and in pre-tender stage. This work will firm up the promise from those sites.
Moreover, these studies will also include drilling, to gain core samples of the seabed. These will be then analysed to clearly identify the kinds of soils and bedrock that is present in those areas.
This is critical too because unknowns here are a significant risk for the wind generator. If the generating company is not aware of poor holding seabed or seabed unsuitable for piling, this could adversely impact the wind farm design.
Uncertainty at this stage can mean more cost to the project to investigate and learn more - to characterise more fully through more and greater detail surveys. It can also mean more redundancy and contingency built into the design.
For example - if the soil holding is poor, then the anchor design for a floating wind turbine is enhanced, either a more expensive technical anchor, more chain, or more more anchors entirely. An excellent article on anchoring systems here advises of the kinds of anchors available and the risks typically associated with wind farm anchor design.
It is a similar concept is cross-replicated from sailing, where anchor choices and anchoring practises are critical to crew safety. Poor anchoring from inexperienced or unprepared sailors has caused many an adverse impact in anchorages, most notably in Greece where strong afternoon winds can be notorious for sweeping destruction through vulnerable bays.
The UK, being a sea-faring nation since ancient times, has had a strong interest in wind studies. During the late 20th century, this was mocked, and rightly so. The BBC was known for giving completely inaccurate forecasts. With greatly improved simulations from the Met Office, and independent contributors there are more options than ever to get a good understanding of accurate wind data for use in wind farm studies. For personal use, onshore and offshore, Windy.com gives excellent free wind condition data.
Furthermore, through recent collaboration with the Carbon Trust, the Met Office has developed a tool to further enhance the data available to small wind farm investors and operators. This is also a boon to those who may often be overlooked in the Wind Power game, when juxtaposed against the high capacity wind farms being deployed now and in the future.
As with Germany above, the UK government has also undertaken wind studies. More recently, however, a series of research grants totalling £2 MM ($ 2.76 MM) were given to some esteemed defence groups in the UK to undertake wind studies and analyse the impact on defence technologies. Thales, QinetiQ, Saab, TWI and Plextek DTS will submit their take on defence and solutions for radar system performance impacted by wind farms.
Anyone who has sailed near an offshore can see that there is interference, depending on the resolution that is used on the radar equipment. The same can be said for pilots. See below shots of typical interference from wind turbines.
Additionally, the UK Industrial Strategy is helping nurture wind power innovation, through the use of autonomous survey tools. This helps demonstrate that the real value and staying-power in wind industry comes from also fostering innovation and value-add studies which go beyond feasibility and constructibility-relevant data gathering.
The same will need to be done more comprehensively across the United States as they seek to roll out their strong wind power ambitions. As wind resources cross over state boundaries, an integrated approach will ensure that wind studies conducted collaboratively between states. This will be critical to ensure that:- work isn't replicated between states - i.e. if one or a couple of companies are contracted at federal level to gather data and conduct studies for all those states - being made available as a central resource for benefit of all
- Local authorities then have the right data to enable them to make the right choices regarding wind capacity estimates to underpin their wind tenders
- Investors and wind power companies can de-risk their projects by drawing insights from across the world which have already been found in wind turbine design and construction
- American cloud computing and AI specialist firms can collaborate using this data to draw insight from the wind farm performance and deduce improvements in design and operations/ maintenance
In the next segment, we will cover how this data is translated into, and causes impacts on the tender design for a wind farm opportunity.
You can reach me on Twitter @Ronnie_Writes
Comments
Post a Comment