UK to build world’s biggest wind farm

London / Bloomberg

The UK government gave the go-ahead for the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, a 6 billion-pound ($7.8 billion) project in the North Sea by Danish utility Dong Energy A/S.
“Britain is a global leader in offshore wind, and we’re determined to be one of the leading destinations for investment in renewable energy, which means jobs and economic growth right across the country,” Business and Energy Secretary Greg Clark said on Tuesday in a statement on his department’s website.
At 1.8 gigawatts, Hornsea Project Two will surpass the 1.2-gigawatt Hornsea Project One, which has been approved but is not yet built. The project is about 89 kilometers off the Yorkshire coast in northwest England, and will create almost 2,000 construction jobs and 580 operations and maintenance posts, according to the
statement.
Britain could scrap the 18 billion-pound ($23 billion) nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point and get the same amount of electricity from offshore wind turbines for roughly the same investment.
That’s the assessment of Bloomberg New Energy Finance following Prime Minister Theresa May’s decision to review whether to proceed with the first new atomic plant in more than three decades. For the same capital costs, the U.K. could install about 830 new turbines at sea, which would generate 25 terawatt hours a year — the same amount of power the Hinkley reactors would produce, according to the London-based researcher. The findings add to the debate over whether Electricite de France SA’s proposal makes economic sense. With the cost of offshore wind turbines falling, developers led by Dong Energy A/S of Denmark are promoting renewables as a better way to get energy without the emissions that cause global warming.
“If we had 18 billion to spend today, we could build 5.7 gigawatts of offshore wind ­– just under double the capacity and generating the same level of power as Hinkley Point,” said Keegan Kruger, analyst for BNEF.
“Hinkley Point C is competitive with all other forms of low carbon electricity generation,” a spokesman for EDF said by e-mail. “The price of 92.50 pounds per megawatt-hour for Hinkley Point’s output compares to an average of 123 pounds per megawatt-hour for renewable schemes in the early 2020s without including the extra costs of their intermittency. Recent contracts for offshore wind were agreed at an average of 137 pounds per megawatt-hour.”
Hinkley would provide power to 6 million UK homes at a time when other nuclear reactors are being retired and coal plants are shutting, raising the need for more generators to feed the UK electricity grid.
Matching Hinkley’s 3.2 gigawatts of electricity output with renewables would require wind turbines and solar panels with a much higher capacity, since those forms of clean energy don’t work at night or when there’s no breeze. Nuclear by contrast is classed as “baseload” energy generating 90 percent of the time it’s switched on.

More Capacity
Since offshore wind farms generate only about half the time, Britain would need double the capacity to deliver the same amount of power as Hinkley, Kruger said. Batteries or hydroelectric storage would also be needed for days when the wind doesn’t blow.
The renewables industry sees the potential demise of Hinkley as an opportunity. Dong, the world’s biggest offshore wind farm installer, has already said it is prepared to step in and build more projects should Hinkley be scrapped. Huub de Rooijen, director of energy at The Crown Estate, which leases out areas of the U.K. seabed for offshore wind farms, also said the technology could grow in place of Hinkley.
Kruger said offshore wind farms can be built faster than Hinkley, which EDF says could be built within a decade after it gets the final go-ahead.
“Not only can we build additional offshore wind capacity for the same level of investment, but we may also create more local jobs,” he said.
In replacing Hinkley, the cheapest option upfront would be power stations fired by natural gas, according to Janis Hoberg, an analyst at BNEF. Building 3.6 gigawatts of new gas capacity would produce 25 terawatt-hours a year and would cost less than 3 billion pounds, compared to the 18 billion pounds required for Hinkley.
Yet using gas would jeopardize Britain’s effort to cut carbon emissions, and the cost of buying fuel would be higher than nuclear, he said.

Onshore Wind
Installing wind turbines on land would be even cheaper than placing units offshore, BNEF found. Matching the energy created by Hinkley would require about 3,000 new onshore wind turbines built across the U.K. That would cost about 11 billion pounds, compared to Hinkley’s 18 billion pounds.
Offshore wind by contrast has a stronger backing by the Conservative government. Former Energy Secretary Amber Rudd said 20-gigawatts could be installed by 2030.

Solar power
Matching the energy output of Hinkley with solar power would actually prove more expensive than nuclear and require covering an area equivalent to the cities of Birmingham and Edinburgh in solar panels, BNEF found.
It would cost 19.4 billion pounds to install the 80 million solar panels required to generate 25 terawatt-hours hours a year. That would cover 48,000 hectares of land.