Phase one of the London Array usurped the UK's Greater Gabbard to become the largest operational offshore wind farm in the world when its final turbine (its 175th) was commissioned on Saturday afternoon. Though construction was completed back in December, it is only now that all of the farm's turbines are supplying the UK's national grid with electrical power. The array has a total capacity of 630 MW.
London Array is located some 20 km (12.4 miles) off the Kent coast, England's most south-eastern county which borders Greater London to its northwest. The 3.6-MW turbines are spread over an area of 90 sq km (35 sq miles).
Government backing for the farm was granted back in 2006, though construction didn't begin until March 2011. The farm has been completed to schedule.
"London Array is a significant achievement in renewable energy," said Tony Cocker, CEO of E-ON UK, joint owners of the array along with Dong Energy and Masdar. "The world's largest operational offshore wind farm will be capable of generating enough energy to power nearly half a million homes and reduce harmful CO2 emissions by over 900,000 tonnes a year," he added.
Though initially conceived as a 1-GW wind farm, it's now thought that a possible second phase would bring capacity up to 870 MW.
It was little more than a year ago that we reported on the opening of the second phase of Walney wind farm, making it the then-largest farm at 367.2 MW of capacity. The London Array looks set to remain largest for a little longer, as no larger farms are yet to emerge from the proposal stage. However, 2.5 GW offshore farms are planned for Sweden and South Korea.
Source: Dong Energy
900,000 tonnes / yr divided by 8,760 gives 102.7 tonnes ie 226,450 lbs /hr of CO2 saved.
A quick search says UK ave CO2 /kWh is 0.527 Kg /kWh ie 1.16 lbs /kWh
So Averaged power is 226,450 / 1.16 ie 195.2 MW Yearly production is 1,709 TWh Capacity factor is 195/630 ~= 31%
"Gearboxes": While some newcomer manufacturers have had problems with gearboxes, some of the established brands like Enercon don't even have gearboxes, but run a direct drive system. These systems used to be in need of rare-earth magnets and were problematic for that reason, but there are some very good efforts underway (and succeeding) to build high-efficiency direct drive generators that don't even need such magnets.
Keep working. Don't drop the ball!
For the storage problem, look at synthetic methane. Gas distribution and storage networks are already in place in industrialized nations. The natural gas grids in cities and its storage tanks can serve as de-facto batteries. There's a lot of work being done already in the E.U. and China, and a bit in the U.S.
It would, but there's a reason it doesn't. It's a new farm and we don't know. Sure, you can do a back-of-the-envelope calc derived from the estimated CO2 savings, but you've missed a key part of that quote: "The world's largest operational offshore wind farm will be capable of generating enough energy to..."
So the CO2 savings would seem to be based on the farm's capacity, not on its expected output.
the rated power at 9.2 m/s is slightly over 2mw. with out looking at a wind profile its hard to say how much power these will produce but my estimate would be 2mw X 24hr X 365 or about 17.5 GWh. Assuming 10 cents per kwh (yes high I know) that would be 1.75 million dollars us? or 100k of power per turbine. The expected length of operation is 20 years.
So each turbine will generated about 2 million dollars worth of electricity.
I used 10 cents per KWh because I expect carbon taxes and other factors will increase energy cost. Really its tough to say what the power will be sold for, but I suspect the total cost of the turbines and towers would be less then 2million dollars (us).
How much is wholesale electricity going for in the UK?